Graduate Students

Aarionne Hobbs (b. 1999) is a Dallas-based realist painter whose work explores loneliness, isolation, liminal spaces and human connection. Drawing from his experiences as a Black man coming of age with limited resources and learning to navigate life on his own, Hobbs uses painting to work through feelings of disconnection, uncertainty, and the desire to find a sense of belonging.

His work often depicts solitary figures placed within quiet, ambiguous spaces that reflect moments of uncertainty, distance and emotional isolation. He is drawn to the parts of life that can be difficult to put into words such as feeling disconnected, questioning one’s place in the world, or trying to find a way through a changing relationship.

Hobbs received his B.F.A. in Painting from Stephen F. Austin State University in 2025. His work has been included in group exhibitions in Dallas, including Five Painters: New Myths (2026), organized by Kirk Hopper Fine Art.

Cole Daniel Thomas (b. 2002) is a Southern California raised, Texas based artist and photographer. In his practice, Thomas explores themes of identity, the body, and a search for meaning. Text and photography are two forms that speak to him, but for Thomas, creating art is not just about the result, but for the chase, the study, and the belief that every piece moves him forward.

Thomas received a B.F.A. from the University of Oregon in 2025. During his undergraduate studies, he participated in several solo and group exhibitions such as Opera (2024), Imposters (2025) and A Body Embedded (LaVerne Kraus Gallery, 2025). In the time since, Thomas worked as an art educator and joined the Experimentally Structured Museum of Art as a guest curator.

Capri Woss (b. 2003) is an interdisciplinary artist studying the complex narratives of women and how their genetic background can influence familial and interpersonal dynamics. She works as a painter, sculptor, and fiber-based artist, honing a propensity towards mixed-media approaches. Her work uses her extensive background in the sciences to highlight how one’s form can shape their everyday experience. Focusing on both literal and abstract anatomical depictions, Woss highlights the delicate nature of female interconnection, examining the ebb and flow of domesticity across her lineage.

Woss received her B.F.A. in Fine Arts and B.S. in Biological Sciences, with minors in Art History and Chemistry, from SMU in 2025. In her third year of undergraduate study, she was the sole recipient of the Mary Vernon Painting Prize. Her work has been exhibited in several curated group exhibitions, including the 500x College Expo in 2023.

Emme Landes is a painter who draws inspiration from feminine identity and representations from her own experiences. Her practice exists in dialogue with feminist theory, while exploring the contrast between authenticity and social expectations of women. Her paintings delve into the lived experience and self-expression of women. Investigating the density of female experience, Landes often uses everyday objects that hold a deeper message within her artwork. Drawing on shared narrative and collective memory, her artwork represents female experiences that play into the presentation and expectations of women in society.

Landes is from Little Rock, AR and graduated with honors from the University of Mississippi with a B.F.A. in Painting (2024). Her work has been featured in multiple regional shows and galleries even as she explores new styles, materials and concepts for her art. She continues to further her conceptual frameworks, while fostering conversations of identity and experience through her paintings.

Hermila Cuevas (b. 1986) is a Mexican-American multidisciplinary artist whose work engages with Chicana Art, the new mestiza theory, and the complexities of cultural identity, particularly the challenge of reconnecting fragmented histories after a cultural disconnection. She works across ceramics, digital media, painting, and sculptural installation to explore Mesoamerican history, tradition, and the intersection of the past and the present. Drawing on her indigenous ancestry and her Mexican-American and Tejana upbringing, Cuevas creates immersive works that invite viewers to look inward, fostering a deeper connection to their own histories and identities, and reflecting on how personal and cultural narratives are woven together.

Cuevas has exhibited her work in group exhibitions at the Mesquite Art Center, Bath House Cultural Center, and Garland Granville Arts Center, as well in other community and university exhibitions. She earned her B.F.A. in Fine Art with a concentration in ceramics from East Texas A&M University-Commerce (formerly known as Texas A&M Commerce) in 2023, receiving two Honors College grants that led to her first solo exhibition at the Wathena Temple Gallery for East Texas A&M Commerce Art Walk in 2023. Her work has received multiple awards from the Spring Juried show exhibition in 2022, 2023 and 2025.

Ken Craft (b. 1967, New Mexico) is an artist based in Dallas, TX, where he lives with his wife Carolyn and several pets. He retired in 2025 from The City of Garland, TX Fire Department where he worked for 30 years. He retired as a Fire Captain and Paramedic. Throughout his years as a firefighter, he maintained a career as a working and exhibiting artist.

Craft graduated from The University of North Texas in 1990 with a B.F.A. in painting and a minor in English literature. He has exhibited with 500X, Gray Matters Gallery and Ro2 Art in Dallas. In 2015 he won the Top Prize award at Artspace 111’s annual juried exhibit in Fort Worth with artist Vernon Fisher as juror. That led to a group exhibition and representation with Mark Moore Fine Art, Orange Acres Park, CA. Shortly after, he was published in New American Painting #138 covering the Western U.S. In 2019, Craft was awarded a three-week Artist’s Residency at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA. He recently completed a four-week Alumni Residency at MASS MoCA in June 2026.

Craft is primarily a representational painter working in oil, watercolor and mixed media. He’s interested in natural history, people's histories, and world events-big and small. He’s also influenced by art history and science, comics and personal narrative. He’s inspired by the literary fiction of authors like Barbara Kingsolver, Richard Powers, and Percival Everett, where through their research and storytelling they reveal rich and complicated worlds of interconnectivity between all life.

Nuran Tever is a Turkish-immigrant artist whose practice explores displacement, memory, time and space through painting and printmaking. Born in Istanbul, Türkiye, Tever draws from her experience as a Turkish immigrant to examine identity and diaspora through the grief of displacement and the memory of home. Her work brings together organic and geometric forms with recurring imagery of Mediterranean fruits and seeds to develop narratives around growth, loss, acceptance and belonging.

Tever earned her B.F.A. in Fine Art from the University of North Texas and began her M.F.A. at SMU in 2026. Her work has been exhibited in university, gallery, and community settings, including her solo exhibition Olive Eyes at The Shed Show in Denton. The exhibition extended her ongoing exploration of the “displaced wanderer,” a figure shaped by departure, memory, growth and the bittersweet process of finding belonging. Alongside her studio practice, Tever has experience in arts education, working to create meaningful connections between art, personal experience and community.

Rebekah Lanier (b. 1997) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Dallas, TX. After obtaining a degree in International Development, Environmental Science, and Painting at The Ohio State University in 2018, she has dedicated her full time to art. Lanier’s work maintains overarching themes of spirituality, gender and sexuality using the female figure and her own visual language to represent contemporary conversations around these subjects. She works across mediums, blending traditional oil painting and watercolor with digital animation techniques, and expanding into figurative sculpture.

In 2021, Lanier presented her first solo exhibition at the Goodrich Gallery in Dallas. Since then, she has participated in artist residencies at the Mauser Foundation in Costa Rica (2023) and Les Buis Residency in France (2024). Recent exhibitions include solo shows at Le Sol House (Dallas, 2024) and Beatnik (Dallas, 2025), as well as group exhibitions with Ivy Gallery (Dallas, 2024), Nostalgia & Noise (Dallas, 2025) and Plus que mes Émotions in Paris, France (2025).

S Rodriguez is a Texas based interdisciplinary artist, writer and curator. S’s practice is grounded in their own experience of growing up southern, texmex and trans. Drawing on non-canonical queer histories and futures, S Rodriguez questions how structures such as species, gender, race and language function both as liberatory technology and oppressive power structure in our current time, and beyond.

S has shown at the Texas Biennial, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, DiverseWorks, the Blaffer Art Museum, the Austin Public Library, the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Lawndale Arts Center, Alabama Song and more. S is a two-time Idea Fund Grant recipient and former Common Field Partner. They are the co-founder of Paraspace Books, a transient bookstore and workshop space centered around queer sci-fi and speculative fiction.

Serena Ramirez is an interdisciplinary artist from El Paso, TX. Her practice centers on experimentation and themes of memory, vulnerability and identity. Through sculptural forms and illustrative techniques, she reimagines childhood artifacts, nostalgic icons, and personal mementos, creating symbolic objects that weave storytelling into a visual language.

Ramirez’s work has been featured in various exhibitions within Texas, including the CAMEO Emerging Artist Exhibition at Lee College, 360: International Sculpture Day at Lá Mecha & Zephyr Contemporary and Creadoras at Tinta Sangre Art Gallery. She was also a recipient of the 2024 Anderson Ranch Scholarship award and presented at UTEP’s 9th Annual Art History Symposium on women in contemporary craft. In 2025, she held her debut solo exhibition Fragments at UTEP’s Glass Gallery. She received her B.A. in Ceramics with a minor in Art History from the University of Texas at El Paso in 2024.