Alumni Stories & Careers
Our alumni are successful artists, designers, educators, and curators. We work to give students many opportunities to build a strong foundation and broad network for a thriving career post graduation.
Featured Alumni
Ondrea Levey
Ondrea Levey is a multidisciplinary artist who works with sculpture, installations, and illustration. Her work is an expression of compassion towards the shadows and dark corners of ourselves using large scale installation that draws you to an intimate connection.
She attended PNCA’s Low-Residency Visual Studies MFA program in order to continue working full time as a high school art teacher - she spent her summers in Portland and got to keep teaching her art students during the year. After graduating, she completed a residency at Power & Light Press in Silver City, NM, on top of accepting a position at One River School of Art & Design as Director of Art Education.
Featured Alumni
​Kelly Marshall
Kelly Marshall is a Seattle-based artist who is heavily influenced by her long time home in San Diego, CA. As a multidisciplinary artist, she creates work centered around concepts of memory, invisible labor, and "nonstalgia" in domestic spaces. Marshall holds Masters Degrees in Visual Studies and Special Education. Her exhibition history includes The Jen Tough Gallery, Santa Fe, NM; The Visionary Projects, NY; Maternal Art Magazine, UK; The Seattle Design Festival, Seattle, WA; and The Front Arte & Cultura, San Ysidro, CA. Marshall is currently the Director of Learning Resources at The Northwest School of the Arts in Seattle, WA.
Featured Alumni
Harrison Creech
Harrison Creech is an artist and designer who was raised in Seoul, South Korea where he works as an educator, teaching design and fine art at Yongsan International School of Seoul.
His work investigates cross-cultural sites of exchange and how identity is formed in a foreign culture. Through a variety of media including fibers, video projection, and bookmaking, he explores how language, time, and objects can be used to examine communication and miscommunication.
Featured Alumni
Bre Gipson
Bre Gipson is a multidisciplinary artist who uses common and discarded materials as a means to physically reform the landscape. She received her BA from University of California Berkeley in 2012 and her MFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2016. She has exhibited in art spaces including Pataphysical Society in Portland, the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, White Walls Gallery in San Francisco, and the University of Alberta in Canada.
Opportunities
Access to a range of artists and thinkers
During our twice-yearly intensives, we welcome visiting artists and curators to campus. Recently guest artists Alexandria Eregbu and manuel arturo abreu presented performative lectures in our Mediatheque theater. Alexandria Eregbu is a conceptual artist and curator who recently received the 3A Arts Award and was a Curatorial Fellow with the ICI Curatorial Intensive, while the prolific manuel arturo abreu, poet and artist, recently co-produced homeschool Field Day at MoMA PS1.
Visitors include Claire Fontaine and Sondra Perry. Students share time, meals, critiques, and studio visits with these visitors for informal conversation and interactions.
"The ability to learn from and interact with visiting artists from around the globe as well as opportunities to work with incredible mentors was life changing. The summer intensive schedule allowed for ample studio time and real connection within the cohort, while still allowing me to maintain my responsibilities outside of school. During the rest of the year, I was able to do really focused research with the support of my mentors as well as dive deep into making. PNCA's state of the art facilities were another huge draw to the program for me. During my time, I got to work in many different mediums to execute my ideas from sewing to video installation. Another unique selling point of PNCA's graduate program was the ability to work across graduate disciplines. I was able to take courses in Critical Studies as well as interact with professors from Creative Writing. Lastly, the LRVS program, in its current form, is incredibly supportive of students. The professors go out of their way to create an educational environment where students are safe to take risks and are given meaningful and constructive feedback."
-Kelly Marshall (2022)
Get in Touch
For more information about the Low-Residency MFA in Visual Studies program, get in touch with Ryan Pierce.
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