Fine Art Faculty

Dr. Meaghan Brady Nelson is an Assistant Professor, Program Director of Fine Arts and Art Education Coordinator at Belmont University. She was an Assistant Professor of Art Education at Middle Tennessee State University from 2013 - 2018 and was a Visiting Professor of Art Education at The University of North Carolina, Greensboro, 2012-2013. Meaghan has a BFA in painting from Washington State University (2001), a teaching certificate from Western Washington University (2003) and both her Masters (2008) and Doctorate (2012) in Art Education were completed at The Ohio State University. 

Her research centers around the ways collaborative artmaking experiences and critical visual literacy may inspire social consciousness. She combines this methodology along with her multilayered identity of becoming a “Mothering-ArtAdemic” (Nelson, M.B., & Combe, J., 2017). Meaghan collaboratively created the Kids Arts Festival of Tennessee that annually serves over 5,000 community members and directed the Unity Flag Project that works to create Purple Empathy in American democracy through the visual arts.

https://www.franklintn.gov/government/departments-k-z/parks/city-parks-events/kids-arts-festival  

https://unityflagproject.com/

Meaghan is dedicated to arts-based service and advocacy in her local and greater communities. Her work has been published both nationally and internationally and as a painter she keeps an active studio practice. Meaghan has been fortunate to have taught in a variety of settings with a multitude of subject and curriculums since 2000. These environments include the university level, public schools, museums, and community settings. Her goal as an artist educator is to inspire students to use their knowledge, skills, and talents in order to build community capacity by empowering themselves and others. 

Dr. Judy Bullington is a Professor of Art History and served as the chair of the Department of Art at Belmont University from 2007 to 2019. She earned a Ph.D. in American Art History from Indiana University at Bloomington (1997) where she completed a dissertation titled "Expanding Horizons-The Artist-As-Traveler in the Gilded Age." She has published articles on women artists and the intersections of art and travel literature in the American Art Journal, Woman's Art Journal, Prospects, Nineteenth Century Studies, and The Gazette Des Beaux Arts, among others. In 2009, Dr. Bullington appeared on the PBS show History Detectives as the result of her research on the African-American artist Thelma Johnson Streat (1911-1959). Awards include a Fulbright to teach American art at Tartu University in Estonia, a Winterthur Research Fellowship, and an NEH Summer Institute grant to study the 19^thc. material culture of New York City at the Bard Graduate Center for Decorative Arts. She lived and taught overseas, which included being the Acting Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Dr. Bullington was previously an Assistant Professor at Western Oregon University and a Visiting Professor at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.

Each semester Professor Bullington teaches two courses, a survey of art history and a special topics seminar, and, every other year offers a Maymester study abroad program in Greece. In 2013, with the support of funding from the Belmont Challenge for Innovation and Technology in Teaching, Dr. Bullington implemented a pilot project called Visual Histories in Virtual Spaces. iPads were introduced into the classroom with the aim of exploring how new technologies can be used to conceptually rethink the way students learn about the histories of art. In addition to teaching, being the faculty advisor to the student organization AHA (Art History Association), and carrying out administrative responsibilities as a department chair, Professor Bullington still maintains an active professional development schedule of scholarly research and presentations at professional conferences like CAA and SECAC.

"As an art historian, I am intrigued by the potential for 'new' narratives to emerge from studies that synthesize the visual, material, and garden histories of America during the formative years of the republic. Beneath every image lies a story and this is one not often told." An essay titled "Cultivating Meaning: The Chinese Manner in Early American Gardens (1763-1830)" is pending publication in an anthology on Global Trade and Visual Arts in Federal New England (2014). Currently, she is preparing a book manuscript on Imaging The Culture of Gardening in Early American Art, 1760-1830.

Kristi Hargrove focuses her studio practice primarily on drawing, but she also investigates other media such as photography, sculpture, and installations. Hargrove has exhibited her work in numerous juried shows and invitational exhibitions across the country. She recently displayed her detailed pencil drawings in the Frist Center’s Metamorphoses exhibition. Hargrove is a member of the Nashville artist collective COOP, a curatorial group committed to presenting challenging, new, or under-represented artists and artworks in the community.

Paris was born in Atlanta, GA, but at some point, has called Washington, Colorado, and California home. She has been photographing since she was 12-years-old when her father gave her a small Instamatic camera. She has continued the practice, but the cameras have changed. Several of her photographic projects have focused on community members in a small town (Sewanee, TN) and prisoners on Tennessee’s death row. Their work with prisoners has resulted in 11 exhibitions, including one at Apexart in New York. That work has also been featured in The Guardian, El Pais, Hyperallergic, Huffington Post, and many other publications.

Christine Rogers is an artist from Nashville, Tennessee. She received her BA in Anthropology from Oberlin College in 2004 and her MFA in Studio Art from Tufts University in 2008. She has exhibited widely across the United States and was in a two-person show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, Chile in the fall of 2012. She has lectured on her work across at various institutions such as Vanderbilt University, Watkins College, Chitrakala Parishath in Bangalore and Cooper Union in New York. From 2012-2103 Christine was a Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Scholar completing research for her project, "Photographing Imagined Landscapes: The Switzerland of India" and her first solo show in India was in the spring of 2013 at 1 Shanthi Road Gallery in Bangalore, Karnataka. She has since shown again in Mumbai in group shows at Clark House Initiative, Project 88 and Chemould Prescott. Her work has been written about in Time Out Bengaluru, The Bangalore Mirror, The Hindu, New Landscape Photography, Hyperallergic, Dazed Digital, Burnaway, The Tennessean and the Nashville Scene. 

Mandy Rogers Horton is an artist living and working in Nashville, Tennessee.

Mandy Rogers Horton has shown nationally including exhibits in Nashville, Louisville, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Madison, WI and elsewhere. Her work is primarily in paint and mixed media however installation and site-specific considerations are significant in her outlook. Earning her MFA from American University in Washington D.C., she also studied at Anderson University, IN, The Queen’s University of Belfast, and The Chautauqua Institute, NY. Rogers Horton is the recipient of Tennessee Arts Commission Professional Development Support Grant and a residency at The Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been featured in The Tennessean, Nashville Arts Magazine, and The Nashville Scene. Ms. Rogers Horton is a founding member and former president (2019-2021) of COOP Gallery, a non-profit curatorial collective in Nashville. She is represented by Chauvet Gallery in Nashville, TN, where she lives with her husband and their young children. For more than fifteen years, she has taught a variety of Studio Art and Art History courses at universities including Belmont University, Lipscomb University, and MTSU.

Brandon Williams was born in Easton, PA with an inherent passion for art. While pursuing art academically, his interests in precise drawing, attention to detail and processes, led him to printmaking. He enjoys the diversity of the medium along with its challenging technical difficulties and surprising results. He specializes specifically in intaglio where he creates prints with contemporary techniques, approaches, and imagery focusing on the competition between the built environment and the natural environment.

He received his BFA from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania in 2013, and his MFA from Kansas State University in 2017. He has held previous teaching positions at Kansas State University and Oklahoma State University. Recently, he was an Artist in Residence and Visiting Artist at Emmanuel College in Boston, MA.

His prints have been shown extensively nationally and internationally in both invitational and competitive juried exhibitions. Some works have been published, won awards, and are in permanent and private collections. He continues to uphold an active and engaged studio art practice by creating/exhibiting prints, completing artist residencies, and giving demonstration and lectures about his art. You can view more at brandonwilliamsart.com and meet him in person at a conference or in the studio where he spends his free time.

Gary, a native of Nashville, received his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Tennessee Knoxville in Ceramics and his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Watkins College of Art and Design. Since then his works have been included in solo shows and group exhibitions throughout the country. White conducts a cross-cultural visual investigation, that explores folkways, identity, and the experiences of the “southern Other”. Gary is the College of Art's first Belmont Faculty Fellow and will be teaching ceramics. 

Artist Statement

We are always in constant search of recording the world around us. This need can be seen in the works of ancient ancestors. From Moche effigy pots of pre-Columbian America to the latest high tech digital camera, the urge to record is undeniably in our genetic human DNA. The immediacy of clay has been there to satisfy this urge throughout history and the modern age. It is only fitting that it is the medium of choice to express and record.

My work is inspired by the rich complex history of the American South, from the perspective of a multi-ethnic southern experience. A category which I have termed the “Other”. My work pays homage to the past and celebrates the present. I gather inspiration from histories, life ways, Ancestors, tribal traditions, folklore, and religious practices to create hybrid archetypes.

These Archetypes become personal expressions of identity, time, place, and life ways of the old and new South. The sculptures transport the viewer back in time to revisit the past and ponder the present. These characters become guardians, guides, and storytellers. Within them hold metaphorical memory, archived experiences, and wisdom.

Armon Means received his BFA in Photography from The Cleveland Institute of Art in Cleveland, Ohio, and an MFA in Photography from Cranbrook Art Academy in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He has also studied at Lacoste School of the Arts located in Lacoste, France, and The School of the Arts in Budapest, Hungary. Means has been an exhibiting fine art photographer and educator since 2003. He has taught at Watkins College of Art / Belmont University, Nashville State Community College, Volunteer State Community College, and Coastal Carolina University. Areas of instruction include all levels of photography, alternative process techniques, history of photography, and art survey/appreciation. He has also exhibited widely in group exhibitions in France, Hungary, and numerous Eastern and Midwestern states, where he has also been active as a visiting artist at multiple venues. His work centers on ideas of cultural concerns, minority identity, and environmental influences and is represented in multiple collections across the United States and Germany.

Tom Williams has taught at the School of Visual Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, New York University, and Vanderbilt University and is also a graduate of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. His writings have appeared in Art in America, Grey Room, and other publications. Williams has also co-facilitated an art workshop in Unit 2 (the Death Row unit) of the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, and he has co-curated (with Robin Paris) a number of exhibitions of prisoners’ art, including Life After Death and Elsewhere at Apexart in New York City. He is also working on a book about art and mass incarceration and co-editing a book about the politics of mimicry in contemporary art.