Noriko Yuasa
Chair, Professor, Director of Graphic Design
Robin Assner-Alvey
Professor, Photography and Time-Based Art
Robin Assner-Alvey is a professor of art in the Leigh Gerdine College of Fine Arts at Webster University. She has been at Webster since 2003 and she teaches all levels of photography and video. Assner-Alvey loves experimenting with photography and pushing her students to investigate the limitless photographic possibilities. In 2017, she received the Emerson Excellence in Teaching Award and the William T. Kemper Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Assner-Alvey is also a practicing artist working with photography, video and installation. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Connecticut (2000) and her Master of Fine Arts from the Ohio State University (2002). Her work examines corporality and asks viewers to consider the experience of living in their own skin. Assner-Alvey’s most recent solo exhibition was Embodied at the Bruce Gallery at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 2019. Her art has been exhibited in various solo and group shows throughout the United States. You can see her work on Assner-Alvey's website.
Racheal Bruce
Visiting Assistant Professor in Illustration
HH/2nd floor
Email: rachealbruce61@webster.edu
Racheal Bruce is a St. Louis-born illustrator and educator. She earned her BFA in Illustration from Webster University and graduated in the first class of the MFA in Illustration and Visual Culture program at Washington University. Prior to her visiting assistant professor in Illustration position at Webster, she taught at Artscope and MADE Makerspace.
Her work has been featured in magazines internationally, with clients such as The Centre for International Governance Innovation, The Baffler, VinePair, Brasserie Dunham, Strange Horizons, The Polyester Dollhouse, Aislin Magazine and Anthology Puzzles.
Bruce specializes in illustrating books, posters and optical animation toys, and researching and writing about the visual culture of 20th century films. Her project EXCORIO won a Cube Award from the 101st Annual Art Directors Club Awards and the Walt Reed Award for Excellence in Illustration and Writing. Her illustrations were included in the 65th Society of Illustrators Annual in New York and have featured in many galleries in St. Louis, receiving multiple Best in Show awards.
Her personal work explores illustration as an interactive performance art and she's curious how an audience grapples with their own feelings of superstition. Her illustrations imbue the sense that a fantastical unreality could exist in our physical world, with all of the whimsy and eeriness that comes with it.
Ryan E. Gregg, PhD
Professor, Art History
Ryan Gregg received his PhD in Art History from Johns Hopkins University with a focus in early modern Italian art and has taught at Webster University since 2008. He teaches courses on Italian Renaissance and Baroque art, as well as the Introduction to the History of Western Art. He regularly takes students to Florence for a short-term study abroad course on Florence in the Renaissance. Other courses he has taught at Webster include the History of Museums, History of Prints, and Symbols and Their Theory.
Professor Gregg's research interests include depictions of cities and fortifications from the 15th to the 17th centuries, the relationship between cartography and historiography in the Renaissance and discussions between art and science, style and meaning and architecture and experience, in the early modern period. Other interests include historic American architecture and its preservation, and early modern prints.
His dissertation, which he is currently working on developing into a manuscript for publication, examines the city views within the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, painted by the workshop of Giorgio Vasari. The project has evolved into a study of Habsburg and Medici use of city views in the mid-16th century. Gregg is also currently working on an examination of the St. Louis Art Museum's Reclining Pan, including its attribution to Francesco da Sangallo, its interpretations, and its reception in the 17th century. Recent scholarship includes "Further Insights into Anton van den Wyngaerde's Working Method," published in Master Drawings in 2013, and "Vasari and German City Views," published in Prints Quarterly in 2010. In addition, Gregg regularly presents at national conferences, and in St. Louis has spoken at the St. Louis Art Museum, the Kemper Art Museum and other various local organizations.
Sofya Karash
Visiting Assistant Professor
Phone:
Email:
Sofya Karash was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and raised in the United States. She holds a BFA in Illustration and Graphic Design from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA in Visual Communication Design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Alongside her teaching, Sofya is Partner and Design Director at The Narrative, a multidisciplinary visual communication design studio she has co-led for more than a decade. Her professional experience includes designing brand identity systems, print communications, websites, digital experiences and information design for cultural institutions, nonprofits and businesses across a wide range of disciplines. Her work is rooted in research, curiosity and experimentation, and is devoted to creating narratives and design systems that communicate with clarity, engage diverse audiences and endure over time.
Jeffrey Hughes, PhD
Professor, Art History and Criticism; Director, Graduate Program; Gallery Director, Hunt Gallery
Jeffrey Hughes is professor of art history and criticism, as well as the director of the Cecille R. Hunt Gallery at Webster University in St. Louis where he teaches courses on modern art, contemporary art and art theory and criticism. He received a BA in Art History from Indiana State University. Hughes earned both an MA and PhD degree in Art History from the University of Iowa.
Hughes is a recipient of numerous grants and fellowships, including Kress Foundation Fellowships for field research in India and to the Aga Khan program at Harvard, the Asian Cultural Council Grant, Webster University faculty research grants and an NEH grant for research on the American avant-garde during World War II. He has curated more than 40 exhibitions at Hunt Gallery and at Wittgensteinhaus, Vienna, Austria and has been a guest lecturer at numerous galleries and institutions, including University of North Texas, Indiana University, University of Chicago and the Saint Louis Art Museum. Hughes’s articles and reviews have appeared in Flash Art, Contemporary, Sculpture, Artpapers, Art on Paper, New Art Examiner, Um:Druck Zeitschrift für Druckgraphik und visuelle Kultur and other publications. His recent research interests have been focused on the history of modern design.
Natalie Baldeon
Visiting Assistant Professor
HH/2nd floor
Phone:
Email: nataliebaldeon26@webster.edu
Natalie Baldeón is a visual artist and educator living in St. Louis, Missouri. She received her BFA from The University of Central Florida and her MFA from the Sam Fox School at Washington University in St. Louis. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art at Webster University and offers artmaking and mindfulness workshops in the St. Louis area.
Her work has been exhibited locally, regionally and nationally at spaces such as the Duane Reed Gallery, The Luminary, Granite City Art and Design District, 31Art Gallery, Evansville Museum, Bill Ford Gallery, Cecile R. Hunt Gallery and Projects + Gallery.
Her personal work explores the relationships between bodies, ecologies and systems of care. Drawing from mythology, permaculture and lived experience, she creates paintings in which human figures merge with botanical and mycological forms, seeking to illuminate the beauty and tension of often-overlooked aspects of societal roles, personal transformation and the passage of time. She is interested in how identities are shaped through lineage, vulnerability and our interconnectedness with the living world.
Lindsay Pichaske
Visiting Assistant Professor in Ceramics
VAS/Room 6
Email: lindsaypichaske@webster.edu
Lindsay Pichaske is a visiting assistant professor of ceramics in the Leigh Gerdine College of Fine Arts. She received a BFA from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and an MFA from the University of Colorado-Boulder. She previously taught ceramics at St. Louis Community College, Maryland Institute College of Art and the College of Southern Maryland, and is excited to join the Department of Art, Design and Art History at Webster University.
Pichaske creates figurative ceramic sculptures that explore ideas of empathy, sentiency and materiality. She is represented by Duane Reed Gallery in St. Louis and exhibits her work broadly; recent shows were held at Jane Hartsook Gallery in New York City, the Fuller Craft Museum and the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art. She was an artist in residence at the Craft Alliance and a long-term resident and Taunt Fellow at the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts. In 2013, she received an Emerging Artist Award from the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts. To learn more about her work, visit Pichaske's website.
Jeri Au
Professor Emerita, Ceramics
Jeri Au was an associate professor of art in the Leigh Gerdine College of Fine Arts at Webster University, where she was head of ceramics, teaching all levels of the media.
Professor Au's mixed media installations combine clay with unexpected (and often organic) materials. For 15 years, Au ran a successful studio pottery in the St. Louis region. Originally from Hawaii, she has exhibited her work across the U.S., the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong. She received her BA in English from St. Louis University in 1969. She also studied at St. Louis Community College, University of Hawaii and Southern Illinois University–Edwardsville.
Tom Lang
Professor Emeritus, Printmaking
Gary Passanise
Professor Emeritus, Painting
Gary Passanise was professor of art in the Leigh Gerdine College of Fine Arts at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri, where he directed the painting program and taught all levels of painting and hybrid-media courses. He received his Master of Fine Arts in painting and drawing from Southern Illinois University.
His work explores the inherent qualities and the symbolic nature of surface and texture in painting and sculpture, using a rich variety of materials, including wax, charred lumber, limestone, steel and found objects. Passanise has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Ford Foundation. He has exhibited in the U.S. and abroad, and his recent solo shows include Constructions at Space B in New York City and Stacks at the Isolation Room/Gallery Kit in St. Louis.
Carol Hodson
Professor Emeritus
Phone: 314-246-7585
Email: hodsonca@webster.edu
Carol Hodson is professor of Art in the Department of Art, Design and Art History at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri. Additionally, she is the faculty advocate for mental health within the Leigh Gerdine College of Fine Art. Hodson directs the Expressive Arts Therapy certificate, teaching key courses within the certificate as well as drawing and performance art. As a licensed mental health counselor (LMHC) with a specialization in expressive arts therapy and trauma training, Hodson also works confidentially with student clients within the Counseling and Life Development Office on the St. Louis Campus. Hodson holds a BFA in Painting and Education from the School of Visual Arts in New York and an MFA in Sculpture and Performance Art from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She received an MA in Expressive Arts Therapy from Lesley University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Hodson's most recent artwork is a series of drawings and prints entitled Neurobotanicals, created during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. You can follow this series as it evolves on Instagram or Facebook. Hodson's performance art work can be viewed on her WordPress site.