Ruth Arts Mary L. Nohl Alumni Professional Development Workshops

The inaugural (2023) Nohl Alumni cohort—Tyanna J. Buie, Colin Matthes, Cris Siqueira, and Sonja Thomsen— began by collectively examining and responding to their specific needs. We were all struck by the wealth of knowledge and experience lodged within this small group, and at their final convening in June 2024, the 2023 cohort outlined an Alumni program that identified opportunities for current and former Nohl Fellows. They proposed tools for mutual support within the broader community of Nohl Fellows.

Their first experiment is a pilot series of professional development workshops for artists. The subjects range from proposals for career advancement, to the ins and outs of indie publication, to drafting “a mutual aid document specifically designed for the Nohl Alumni community.” Some are for specific audiences, others are directed at the entire Nohl alumni community. The series is being presented by the 2023 Alumni Awardees over the course of several months. Each virtual session i open to the community of 100+ former Nohl Fellows. Acting in its administrative capacity, Lynden agreed to facilitate these mutual aid sessions by hosting the Zoom links, promoting them to the Nohl alumni community via our mailing list, making the recordings of each session available to the public afterward.

Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg (Nohl 2008, 2014): Current Projects at Your Service: Fabrication and Installation Support for Artists, workshop

Every artist reaches a point where a project demands more— a larger scale, more complexity, or more technical expertise. That’s where Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg (Nohl 2008, 2014) and their crew at Current Projects can help. As artists themselves, with 25 years of experience in fabrication, exhibition design, and curatorial collaboration, Current Projects works with artists to bring ambitious ideas into reality.

In this presentation, Shana and Brent will walk you through a selected portfolio that includes collaborations such as Folayemi Wilson’s Eliza’s Peculiar Cabinet of Curiosities at Lynden Sculpture Garden, Chris Cornelius’s Knowledge Beings at the Milwaukee Art Museum, and Beth Lipman’s ReGift at the Toledo Museum of Art. These artists received design and engineering consultation, fabrication support on complex sculptural works, and seamless installations where Current Projects acted as liaisons between artists, curators, and conservators.

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Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Cris Siqueira (Nohl 2013): Indie Publishing for Artists

Cris Siqueira hosts a discussion about independent publications produced by artists, from pamphlets, to zines, to chapbooks and beyond. This workshop will share resources covering every step of the self-publishing process, including printing alternatives and tips on how to get the work out in the world.

About the Panelists
Cris Siqueira is a Brazilian-born artist and co-owner of the Lion's Tooth bookstore. She has earned master's degrees in Film and History from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and is working on her first long-form comic. Cris also works as a therapeutic art specialist and translates graphic novels to Portuguese for the Brazilian market. BearBear is a self-publishing Risograph studio led by artists Diana Chu and Ben Grzenia. In addition to ad hoc commissioned work, BearBear partners with local artists, hosts educational workshops, and runs an indie publishing imprint to produce limited edition, short run artist books.

Tuesday, Sept 16, 2025
Sonja Thomsen (Nohl 2011): Cultivating Curiosities While Building Intergenerational Connections
By approaching each other with genuine curiosity and radical openness, we can weave stronger, more resilient networks of support, inspiration, and creative exchange. Join Sonja Thomsen and guest artists for a generative gathering that explores the power of curiosity, openness, and collaborative dialogue across artistic generations. This workshop invites Nohl Alumni to build new networks that break down barriers between generations and disciplines through collaborative dialogue and creative exchange. The workshop will unfold in two dynamic parts:

Guest facilitators will share insights into constructing vibrant, supportive international artistic communities. Drawing from their experiences, they will illuminate strategies for meaningful cross-generational dialogue and mutual understanding.

Participants will collaboratively craft a mutual aid document specifically designed for the Nohl Alumni community. This collective act of creation will transform individual perspectives into a shared resource that supports, nurtures, and amplifies our collective needs as artists working within and out of the Midwest.

Tuesday, October 7, 2025
Tyanna J. Buie (Nohl 2012): Work Smarter, Not Harder: Tools for Teaching Artists to Advance Their Careers
Join Associate Professor Tyanna Buie and her guest, Jacqueline Francis, to learn how to harness the power of your academic environment, collaborate effectively, and propel your artistic and professional journey to new heights.

In this dynamic workshop, teaching artists will discover practical strategies to transform institutional service into a powerful tool for advancing their art careers. Participants will explore how to align their work within their academic environment with their broader career goals, working smarter—not harder—by tapping into the myriad resources their institutions offer.

Key topics include:
•Strategic Positioning
•Collaboration & Networking
•Navigating Institutional Service
•Proposal Development

About Jacqueline Francis
Jacqueline Francis is the dean of the Humanities and Sciences division at California College of the Arts. Since 2008, she has taught in the graduate Visual & Critical Studies and the undergraduate History of Art and Visual Culture programs; she has also taught in CCA’s Fine Arts division and mentored Fine Arts, Design, and Architecture division students at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. She has held key leadership positions at CCA, including serving as chair of the Visual & Critical Studies program and as vice president of the Faculty Senate. She earned tenure and was promoted to Professor in 2022.

Francis is an art historian, curator, and creative writer. She researches and writes modern and contemporary US art histories; she has a special interest in the construction of past and present racialized identities and identifications which she considers in the critical framework of social art history.

Francis is the author of Making Race: Modernism and “Racial Art” in America (2012), the first book-length study of interwar expressionist American painting scrutinized through the lens of critical race art history. Francis has edited and co-edited several books dedicated to the works and influence of historical and present-day artists: Adia Millett (2020 and 2023 catalogues); Romare Bearden: American Modernist (2011); Is Now the Time for Joyous Rage? [writings inspired by the work of Lorraine O’Grady] (2023); and Sargent Claude Johnson (2024). She has published essays in other exhibition catalogs, peer-reviewed journals, and reference texts, and presented her research at museums, conferences, and colleges and universities in North America, Europe, and Asia. She has been a visiting professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, at San Francisco State University, and at Kenyon College.

Francis has served on the boards of research projects, scholarly publications, and member organizations that serve the field of art history and visual cultural studies, including The Living New Deal initiative, Third Text: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Culture (London, UK), the College Art Association, and the US Latinx Art Forum. She is the Secretary of the National Committee for the History of Art, which is the US delegation to the Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art. Francis was the president of the Queer Cultural Center of San Francisco (2017-2023). She is currently a member of the 3.9 Art Collective—a group of Black creatives dedicated to increasing the visibility of the city's Black artists, writers, and arts professionals. In 2023, Francis was named to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts “100,” honored for her activism and leadership in the San Francisco Bay arts and culture community. She was the recipient of a 2017-18 Individual Artist Commission from the San Francisco Arts Commission for work on a collection of short stories. Francis received her AB in English Literature from Dartmouth College; her MA in African-American Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and her doctorate in the History of Art from Emory University.