Art Education Faculty & Staff

Anna Sigrídur Arnar is a Professor of Art History in the School of Visual Arts as well as ...

Anna Sigrídur Arnar is a Professor of Art History in the School of Visual Arts as well as a Graduate Faculty Member and Affiliated Faculty in Women’s and Gender Studies Program at MSUM. She teaches upper level courses in 19th- and 20th-Century Art, Women and Art, Contemporary Art, Design, and Theory (a senior capstone seminar), as well as special topics courses “The Book: History, Culture, and Art”, and “Modernism/Postmodernism: Narratives of the 20th Century.” In 2011 she published The Book as Instrument. Stéphane Mallarmé, The Artist’s Book, and the Transformation of Print Culture with the University of Chicago Press and was awarded the Robert Motherwell Book Award for outstanding publication in the history and criticism of modernism from the Dedalus Foundation in New York. Her current project is called “Social Spaces of the Book” analyzing artists’ books and sculptural bookworks at perennial exhibitions of contemporary art.

Professor Bachmeier is a native of Anamoose, N.D., who completed his MFA degree in ceramic...

Professor Bachmeier is a native of Anamoose, N.D., who completed his MFA degree in ceramics from the University of North Dakota. Professor Bachmeier’s career work in education and ceramics has garnered over 50 Best of Show awards and grants including the national NICHE award for wheel-thrown ceramics. He was recognized with the prestigious N.D. Governor’s Award in Arts Education for his “numerous, significant, and continued contributions to the state and region.” and recognized by Carnegie as a nominee for U.S. Professor of the Year. His ceramic works are represented in personal, private, and corporate collections in all 50 states including N.D. Governor’s Mansion, Microsoft Permanent Collection, S.D. Museum of Art, Plains Art Museum, Dacotah Prairie Museum, Rourke Art Museum, and Michelle Obama’s office in the White House. He is one of 19 brick sculptors in the country, having completed numerous large-scale installations including Sanford Hospital Sioux Falls, Concordia College Moorhead, and U.S. Army base, Camp Grafton, Devils Lake, N.D.

Zhimin Guan, professor of art/painting, earned his MFA in painting/drawing from Fort Hays ...

Zhimin Guan, professor of art/painting, earned his MFA in painting/drawing from Fort Hays State University in 1998, the same year he joined MSUM. Guan has exhibited his art throughout the U.S. and China, including China National Art Gallery, China Academy of Art Museum, Singapore Asian Artist Gallery, New York Asian Cultural Center, North Dakota Museum of Art, Rourke Art Museum, and Plains Art Museum. Guan has presented 20 solo shows, 200 professional shows and received 25 art awards. He was the 2010 McKnight Fellowship recipient from Lake Region Art Council. His works were featured in numerous art magazines and public/private collections, including Microsoft, the Kilbourne Group, Singapore Asian Art Gallery, Rourke Art Museum, Plains Art Museum, and North Dakota Museum of Art. Guan strives to equally balance traditional and experimental, figurative and abstract in his art. please visit: www.zhiminguan.com to see more of his work.

Professor Park teaches Foundation Drawing I and II, Foundation Design, Introduction to Ill...

Professor Park teaches Foundation Drawing I and II, Foundation Design, Introduction to Illustration, and upper level Drawing / Illustration courses. He is an award-winning artist who has worked as an Interior Designer, Architectural Illustrator, Freelance Illustrator, and has illustrated four Interior Design textbooks. Professor Park earned his BFA from Brigham Young University, Provo UT, and his MFA from Northern Illinois (DeKalb) University.

Sherry Lee Short received her Master of Fine Arts with Distinction from the University of ...

Sherry Lee Short received her Master of Fine Arts with Distinction from the University of Georgia in 1988. She teaches all levels of drawing and illustration and coordinates the department’s three distinctive certificates in illustration—Scientific Illustration, Sequential Art, and Book Illustration. Her teaching philosophy has an interdisciplinary focus and encourages students to develop a vision for the role of their artworks in a social context. She has held national and international artist residencies in remote wilderness areas, including the Porcupine Wilderness (Michigan, 2015), Isle Royale National Park (Michigan, 2018), Theano Point (Ontario, Canada, 2019). Short received the MinnState Outstanding Educator Award in 2019 and MSUM’s Dille Outstanding Lecturer Award in 2020.

Walla spent much of his young life on the West Coast. Born in Los Angeles and later moving...

Walla spent much of his young life on the West Coast. Born in Los Angeles and later moving with his family to the Northwest. The compulsion to make objects and images was present from a very young age. Walla graduated from Western Washington University with his B.F.A in sculpture in 1997. After graduation he maintained a studio and lived in Bellingham, Wash. In 2000 he attended the University of Wisconsin Madison to earn his MFA with an emphasis in sculpture. In 2003 he accepted a teaching position at MSUM where he is a professor of sculpture. In 2006 he was selected as a McKnight Fellow and is currently a nominee for the 2015 Joan Mitchel Fellowship. Walla has had numerous exhibitions both regional and national, most recently a two-person exhibition at the Rourke Art Museum titled Together. Past exhibitions include Wait & See at the Plains Art Museum, Don’t Piss On Me and Tell Me Its Raining at Apex Art, New York, N.Y. a solo installation at Fraction Workspace in Chicago, Ill., and, InWords at the University Gallery in Newark, Del.