Faculty spotlight

Art Faculty: Awards, Residencies & Revisited Projects

Distinguished Professor Jim Stone is an exhibiting artist who uses photography. His photographs have been published in three monographs and exhibited internationally; they are represented in the permanent collections of over 30 major museums and public archives.
August 28, 2025

Distinguished Professor Jim Stone is an exhibiting artist who uses photography. His photographs have been published in three monographs and exhibited internationally; they are represented in the permanent collections of over 30 major museums and public archives. Over the summer, Stone was recently awarded the Outstanding Artist Educator for 2024 by Penland School of Craft. The Penland School of Craft is a national craft education center dedicated to fostering a creative life. Each year, Penland honors an instructor as an Outstanding Artist Educator. These nominations come from the board of trustees and the school’s executive staff. The criteria for selection are as follows: the artist’s long-term and consistent contribution to Penland through teaching or other involvement, the stature of the artist’s body of work in advancing the field of craft, the impact of the artist’s work on others, and finally, the generosity of the artist as a teacher and mentor to others.

Assistant Professor Stephanie Woods is a multi-disciplinary artist working primarily in the fields of photography, fiber, video, and sculpture. Woods cultivates an artistic practice that explores Black American culture and the American South. Her research examines involuntary cultural assimilation, the politicization of afro-hair, and domestic spaces as liberatory spaces that create portraits of alternate realities. Recently, she had a summer residency at Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, NE. She developed a new body of work focused on how the cultural exchange during the transatlantic slave trade, specifically the exchange of West African foods like okra, sweet potatoes, and black-eyed peas-shaped Southern American cuisine. The Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts facilitates the creation, presentation, and understanding of contemporary art through an international residency program, exhibitions, and educational programs.

Finally, former photography Regents’ Professor Adrienne Salinger recently republished her book, “In My Room: Teenagers in their Bedrooms,” which showcases teenagers in their bedrooms. Salinger revisits her groundbreaking 90s project, offering an expanded glimpse into the rooms and lives of American teens. Her photographs were paired with interviews of her subjects, showing the disparity between what people say about themselves and what the photographs seem to reveal. It was released in 1995, and it was an immediate success, selling nearly 24,000 copies in its first few years.

Incredible work!

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

READ MORE about the Outstanding Artist Educator article at https://penland.org/jim-stone-outstanding-artist-educator/
READ MORE about Adrienne Sallinger at https://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/article/68415/1/the-story-behind-adrienne-salinger-cult-photos-of-teenage-bedrooms
LEARN MORE about our incredible faculty at https://art.unm.edu/people/faculty

The forest

Kaitlin Bryson Selected for 2026 Cohort for Monument Lab Re:Generation!

Congratulations to Kaitlin Bryson for being selected to take part in the 2026 cohort for Monument Lab Re:Generation! She received a $100,000 grant for her ongoing project, Bellow Forth. Bellow Forth is a community project focused on restoring soil health and environmental resiliency through storytelling and collaboration, community and ecosystem science, and social art practice in wildfire-impacted lands and communities in northern New Mexico.

Eric-Paul Riege stands in his studio wearing woven sculptural jewelry and face paint, surrounded by fiber materials and tools.

Alum Highlight: Eric-Paul Riege Receives 2025 Trellis Art Fund Grant

Eric-Paul Riege, a Gallup-based Diné artist and recent UNM graduate, has been recognized as a 2025 Stepping Stone Grantee by the Trellis Art Fund. His multidisciplinary practice uses weaving as both process and philosophy, blending ancestral knowledge, spirituality, and contemporary art to create works that are living, mobile, and deeply connected to cultural memory.