Katie Batten
Integrated Studio Arts ’12

Katie Batten is an artist and educator, born Chicago in 1990. She received a BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design in 2012 and an MFA in Painting from the Tyler School of Art (Temple University) in 2018. She has exhibited across the US and her practice includes painting, ceramics and murals. Currently, she lives in the Chicago area while working at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in Graduate Admissions.

Paula DeStefanis
Sculpture ’96

Paula DeStefanis is an American painter known for her multilayered abstract paintings. Working alternately in acrylic and oil, she uses repetition and layering to symbolize time, duration, and change. Her process leads to an in-depth exploration of a concept from multiple perspectives. Layering paint, sometimes with unconventional tools, often scratching away to find what lies beneath, the work celebrates both the physical and emotive qualities of each medium.

Paula is active in the arts community through her work with North Shore Academy of the Arts and the Arts Mill. As Director, Paula drives art and educational programming for the two facilities as well as curation and management of exhibits.

A practicing artist for 30 years, Paula divides her time between her studios in the US and UK. Her work can be found in galleries throughout the Midwest as well as corporate and private collections around the world.

Grant Gill
Photography ’16

Grant Gill is an artist and educator based in Milwaukee, WI. Their work employs magic as a queered act and uses images and objects to project limitless structures. They graduated in 2019 with their MFA from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, and their BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. Grant has exhibited nationally and internationally, notably featured at the Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati, OH), The Neon Heater Gallery (Findlay, OH), and Osnova Gallery (Moscow, Russia). They are represented by The Alice Wilds.

Katie Grinell
NSP: Fine Arts ’21

Katie Grinell is a fine artist currently based in Milwaukee, WI. Grinell’s work continues to explore personal memories through abstraction by investigating the relationship between darkroom photography, image capturing, and painting. Recently, her work has explored the use of text and animation. She received her BFA in New Studio Practice (Fine Art), with art history and arts management minors from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.

Brigid Malloy
Illustration ’18

Brigid Malloy is a children’s book author and illustrator who graduated from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design with a BFA in illustration and a minor in communication design. She has illustrated 12 books, two of which she wrote herself. Her preferred materials for illustrating include watercolor, colored pencil, ink and a touch of photoshop. She was born in Wisconsin and grew up in a family of ten kids. Today she lives in Wauwatosa with her cat, Pippin.

Todd Mrozinski
Painting ’97

Todd Mrozinski acquired his BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design in 1997 where he was the recipient of a Fredrick Layton Scholarship and attended The New York Studio Program. Mrozinski was the 2015-16 Pfister Artist-in-Residence and exhibits his work at Portrait Society Gallery, Milwaukee, WI. He was a contributing art writer for Urban Milwaukee and Artdose Magazine, is a MARN Mentor and teaches etching, drawing and painting at MIAD. He and his wife, Renee Bebeau, have a studio in The Nut Factory in Milwaukee, WI.

Nirmal Raja
Painting ’08

Nirmal Raja is an interdisciplinary artist living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She had lived in India, South Korea and Hong Kong before immigrating to the United States thirty years ago. She holds a BA in English Literature from St. Francis College in Hyderabad, India; a BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. She has participated in solo and group shows in the Midwest, nationally and internationally. She is the recipient of several awards including “Graduate of The Decade” from University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Raja received the Mary L. Nohl Fellowship for individual artists for the year 2020-21. She collaborates with other artists and strongly believes in investing energy into her immediate community while also considering the global. She curates exhibitions that bring people from different cultures and backgrounds together. She was a mentor at RedLine Milwaukee, a community arts incubator for six years and is now a mentor for the Milwaukee Artists Resource Network.

Julie Roth
Illustration ’13

Julie Roth is a professional artist & illustrator from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and a graduate of the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (B.A. Illustration). Painting commercial murals and large-scale oil paintings has become her primary focus. Her murals can be found in public spaces throughout Wisconsin and her “larger-than-life” oil paintings are held in private collections and institutions around the country.

Christian Sis
Drawing ’12

Christian Sis was raised in Madison, Wisconsin. He graduated from Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) in 2012 with a BFA in Drawing. While at MIAD Christian gravitated toward figurative work and the power of narratives conveyed through the human form. He currently lives in West Allis, with his wife and young daughter, where he works as an artist.

Cassandra Smith
Sculpture ’06

Cassandra Smith is an artist and designer working in Milwaukee, WI. In 2006, she graduated from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design with a BFA in Sculpture. After graduating, Cassandra co-owned the now closed Armoury Gallery which exhibited contemporary work by local and national emerging artists. She was also the co-owner and editor of Fine Line Magazine, an international fine arts publication that produced five high-quality, ad-free issues. Cassandra has curated several visual art exhibitions in the Milwaukee area.

Among other places, her work has been shown at the John Michael Kohler Art Center, the Milwaukee Art Museum, Paper Boat Gallery, the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts and the Society for Contemporary Craft in Pittsburgh. Cassandra’s current body of work, hand-painted deer antlers and taxidermy, has been featured by Anthropologie, US Weekly, Harpers Bazaar, Better Homes & Gardens and Bergdorf Goodman.

Cassie Tompkins
Photography ’01

Cassie Tompkins is a Chicago-based artist working between the media of print-making, textiles, and ceramics. In 2001 she graduated with a BFA in photography from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design and in 2010 received a BFA with a concentration in visual communication design from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She was the Lillstreet Art Center’s artist-in-residence in Textiles from 2019–21. In 2018 she was an award recipient of the Cleve Carney Art Gallery’s “One: Annual Emerging Artist” exhibition and an open studio resident at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, ME. She completed the inaugural FIELD/WORK Residency at the Chicago Artist Coalition and attended ACRE residency in Steuben, WI in 2017. She has exhibited throughout the Chicago area at Mana Contemporary, the Comfort Station, the Annex Gallery at Spudnik Press, Lillstreet Art Center, ACRE Projects, Cleve Carney Art Gallery, and Co-Prosperity Sphere; and beyond at the Center for Book Arts, New York, NY, Eckert Gallery, Millersville University, Millersville, PA, and Gallery for Contemporary Art, Indiana University Northwest, Gary, IN.

Dylan Wallace
Interior Architecture + Design ’20

Dylan spends his time working on historically accurate home additions in Shorewood, or making love with his fiance, Wyethe, or dancing with a skateboard under his feet somewhere; with all that going on, there is little time left in the day. Dylan and Wyethe cook together, clean together, make artwork together, and discuss their daily lives and dream together. Dylan has skated and made artwork for as long as he can remember. He lived in a forest down by a river in Illinois until he moved to Milwaukee to hone his craft in design and making at MIAD. Arthur Talayko, Joe Boblick, Will Pergl, and Eric Gebhardt were a few of his favorite and most influential professors; It is at the nexus of their relationships where Dylan has learned to design and build thoughtful objects, drawings, and living environments with wood, plaster, clay, metal, and other mediums like SketchUp and Procreate.