Alumni News

Kelly Moran, MFA ICIT 2012 performed at famed Brooklyn Club, Roulette

Kelly Moran, MFA ICIT, peformed at the famed Brooklyn club, Roulette on September 7. Mora is a versatile keyboardist and composer, spent recent months touring with the prominent electronic artist Oneohtrix Point Never. Traces of that collaboration are evident in the dreamy reveries and playful...

14 Art World “Bad Boys” Whose Macho Work Was Impossible to Ignore

At the height of Performance Art, University of California Irvine student Chris Burden asked a friend to shoot him in the arm with a .22 rifle. He titled the action Shoot (1971). The friend was supposed to just graze the artist’s skin. Instead, the bullet passed straight...

Jasmine Ejan (BA 2001) in "Cabaret" at the Celebration Theatre in Hollywood

Jasmine Ejan, BA Dance 2001, is currently playing the role of Rosie in Cabaret at the Celebration Theatre in Hollywood.

Summer Reading List by Faculty and Alumni

With summer here, we thought we would share summer read recommendations by faculty and alumni.   Books by Faculty “György Ligeti’s Cultural Identities” by Amy Bauer (Associate Professor of Music), Márton Kerékfy. "Making Sense: Cognition, Computing, Art and Embodiment" by Simon...

Alexis Smith (BA 1970) to be honored at Venice Family Clinic Art Walks & Auction

The 39th annual Venice Family Clinic’s Art Walk & Auctions honors three world-renowned Venice-based artists: this year’s signature artist Alexis Smith (BA 1970) along with honorees Sam Durant and Ed Moses, posthumously. Venice Art Walk takes place on Sunday,...

Marcia Hafif, Painter of Monochromatic Works, Is Dead at 88

Marcia Hafif, an artist best known for monochromatic paintings that explored the intersection of color, brush stroke, surface and light, died on April 17. She was 88. In 1969, Ms. Hafif returned to the United States to attend the University of California at Irvine, where she earned a master of...

Brian T. Vernon (MFA, Dance 1994) Dean at Western Connecticut State University

Brian T. Vernon (MFA, Dance, 1994) is in his second year as Dean of the School of Visual and Performing Arts at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, CT.

Noritaka Minami MFA 2011 and Ashley Hunt BA 1994 awarded Graham Foundation Grant

Graham Foundation awarded over $530,000 in grants to individuals which included Noritaka Minami MFA 2011 and Ashley Hunt BA 1994. Ashley Hunt - Degree of Visibility Degrees of Visibility tackles the politics of erasure and camouflage that allow mass incarceration to take place...

Guilty or not guilty? That is the question as UCI law school deans face off in a mock trial of Hamlet

Zak Houston, MFA 2015, played Hamlet, Shakespeare's fictional Danish prince, during a mock trial presented by UCI Law at the Irvine Barclay Theatre on April 11, 2018.

Kori Newkirk, MFA 1997, Artist in Residence at Pasadena City College

Alumnus Kori Newkirk (MFA 1997) is currently Artist in Residence at Pasadena City College. A solo exhibition in the Boone Family Gallery accompanies this appointment. 

Center Stage with UCI Alum Jacob Ben-Shmuel

UC Irvine’s Claire Trevor School of the Arts has trained and molded many rising stars and artists of today, who have taken their talents to live out their dreams. The New University was able to talk with one of these alumni, Jacob Ben-Shmuel. He is currently starring in the touring cast of “The...

Ken Gonzales-Day, MFA 1993, "Unseen: Our Past in New Light: Ken Gonzales-Day and Tituts Kaphar" exhibition at National Portrait Gallery

Ken Gonzales-Day, MFA 1993, is in a major 2-person exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery , "UnSeen: Our Past in a New Light: Ken Gonzales-Day and Titus Kaphar." The exhibition will be on view from Friday, March 23, 2018 through January 6, 2019. As the Smithsonian's National...

Grace Morrison (MFA 2016) will play the role of Viola in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

Pioneer Theatre Company presents William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, running Friday, March 30 through Saturday, April 14, 2018. Grace Morrison, MFA 2016, plays Viola in her first PTC role. Her favorite regional credits include Kate in The Taming of the Shrew and Horatio in Hamlet with New Swan...

The Art Department congratulates Liat Yossifor, MFA 2002, on the exhibition of her most recent paintings

The Art Department congratulates Liat Yossifor, MFA 2002, on the exhibition of her most recent paintings at Miles McEnery Gallery, opening in New York on Saturday, March 17. The exhibition will run from March 17 - April 14.  In 2011, Liat Yossifor definitively turned her painting practice...

Hong-An Truong MFA interviewed in Artforum about her recent work

Hương Ngô and Hồng-Ân Trương’s (MFA) work The Opposite of Looking is Not Invisibility. The Opposite of Yellow is Not Gold, 2016, pairs vernacular photographs of the artists’ mothers with texts from 1970s-era US congressional hearings regarding Vietnamese refugees. It is featured in “...

Jacob Ben-Shmuel (BFA 2017) comes home in the National Tour of "The Book of Mormon"

Jacob Ben-Shmuel (BFA 2017) comes home in the National Tour of The Book of Mormon, running at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts 20 March – 1 April 2018.

Alum James Luna (1950-2018)

James Luna (BA 1977) passed away on March 3. He was a highly influential Native American performance artist with an international reputation. "Luna has had more than forty solo shows and participated in eighty-five group exhibitions. His work was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the New...

Max Haymer to Perform at the Irvine Barclay Theatre in March

Max Haymer (BM, 2007) has been touring with jazz legend Arturo Sandoval. He will be performing with Sandoval at the Irvine Barclay Theatre on March 10. Haymer has toured internationally, performing at major jazz festivals and venues with a diverse range of renowned artists, and he has also...