MFA Faculty

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.

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.

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.

Jodi Hays is a Nashville-based artist and curator. She has exhibited her work at galleries and museums across the United States including Corcoran Gallery of Art, Brooks Museum of Art, Wiregrass Museum of Art, Cooper Union, and Boston Center for the Arts. Her work can be found in important public and private collections including J. Crew Company, the Tennessee State Museum, and Music City Center. Her work is documented in seven exhibition catalogues and has been positively reviewed in publications such as Number Inc. and Sharon Butler’s Two Coats of Paint. She is a recipient of several awards including from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, and the Tennessee Arts Commission. Hays holds a BFA from The University of Tennessee (Knoxville) and an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Art. Residencies include the Cooper Union, National Parks of America, and Vermont Studio Center. She lived and worked in Boston for a number of years where she was Assistant Director at the Cambridge Art Association, moving to East Nashville where she maintains a studio and pop-up gallery Dadu. She was on Faculty and Curator at Tennessee State University. Her work is represented by Red Arrow Gallery (TN) and Art File (NJ, works on paper).

jodihays.com

Ron Lambert received his BFA from the University of Connecticut in 1997, and his MFA from the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in 2004. After getting his masters, Ron taught at The Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, WA, at Alfred University in NY where he received an Excellence in Teaching Award, and Watkins College of Art in Nashville, TN. Ron is currently a tenured Associate Professor at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania where he heads the sculpture program. Ron's sculptures have shown in galleries nationally, including the Urban Institute for Contemporary Art in Michigan, the Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum in San Antonio, the Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle, the New Britain Museum of Art in Connecticut, and The Sculpture Center in Cleveland, OH. His video art pieces have been screened internationally including the Crosstalk Video Festival in Budapest, Hungary, CICA in South Korea, and the Sanluan Yishu project in Beijing, China. His work is in the Vascovitz collection, the Swedish Medical Center, and the collection of the Tacoma Art Museum. Ron is a founding member of the COOP collective in Nashville, TN.

rlambert.myportfolio.com

An artist and educator for nearly three decades, Terry Thacker has shown in numerous national and regional exhibitions at venues such as the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Brooks Museum, Hunter Museum, Dulin Gallery, and Cheekwood. He has exhibited solo installations at Vanderbilt University, Western Kentucky University, Murray State University, Alexandria Museum, and the Memphis Center for Contemporary Art. An active lecturer and reviewer, Thacker has written for Art Papers and has lectured at the Southeastern College Art Association and the Frist Center.

www.cumberlandgallery.com/terry-thacker-page

Lisa Ellen Williams is faculty in the MFA in Visual Arts program at Watkins College of Art at Belmont University. She also is a Lecturer of English and Women’s & Gender Studies at Middle Tennessee State University. She earned her BA in English with minors in Gender Studies and Spanish and also has an MA in English with emphases in Feminist Theory and Pop Culture Studies. Her research primarily examines feminist activism’s role in the evolving representations of female sexual identities in horror and sexploitation cinema. Her recent publications include an investigation of the Anthropocene’s impact on cinema and a study of portrayals of grief in the works of Oz Perkins. Currently, she is writing a book that traces images of women and weaponry in horror films.

Moses Williams was born in Birmingham, AL and grew up in Nashville, TN. He received a BFA from Watkins College of Art, Design & Film in Nashville, TN and an MFA from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. Williams works at the intersection of performance, sculpture, video, and sound to question dominant cultural expectations, institutions, and ideology. He has exhibited and performed throughout the US and Europe and has collaborated with The Nashville Ballet and Alias Chamber Ensemble. His work includes collaborations with the residents of Unit 2 (the Death Row unit) at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution.

www.moseswilliams-works.com

Barbara Yontz is a Professor of Visual Art at St. Thomas Aquinas College, New York teaching primarily studio classes in painting, drawing and photography. Additional Master's degrees in Art History from Vanderbilt University and Art Education from the University of South Florida expand interests and teaching to those disciplines as well. Splitting time between Manhattan and Nashville, art practice in sculpture, installation, performance and video work yielded to an interest in Art and Social Justice. Since 2013, a project with a group of men living on Death Row at Riverbend Maximum Security Prison in Nashville, TN has shifted her artistic interests. The project has yielded a number of exhibitions including, Unit 2 Voices: Artwork from Death Row, at St. Thomas Aquinas College in September of 2015. Recent individual work includes a group of drawings, The Love Letter Series, conceived as individual letters to each of these 11 men of Unit 2. Previous exhibitions include: Vanderbilt University and the Frist Center for Visual Arts, Nashville; the Phoenix Gallery, New York; the Jose Marti National Library, Havana; the Boston Museum School; and the Long Beach Island Foundation of the Arts and Sciences, NJ.

www.barbarayontz.net