Kelly Alexander-Wendorf
Admissions Office Manager & Events Coordinator

Kelly Alexander is a papercutting artist, living and working in Wisconsin. She started her college experience at Joliet Junior College and transferred to the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design where she received her BFA in Printmaking. During her time at MIAD she explored papercutting and printmaking together. By using an exacto knife she creates artwork made up of intricately cut and layered colored papers portraying nature and the human figure.

Kat Barndt
Technology Support Specialist

Kat Barndt is an artist and designer with a BFA in Industrial Design and Communication Design. She seeks interest in learning to do many things and uses the large variety of mediums in her work to achieve final pieces that explore topics that people are afraid to talk about. She feels that as an artist and designer that she has a platform in which she can use to help people and to bring to light themes that are less than desirable to confront.

Megan Cunningham
Assistant Registrar

Megan is a multidisciplinary artist, illustrator, & writer living in Milwaukee, WI. She attended MIAD and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, earning a BA in Anthropology with a certificate in American Indian Studies. She has had a dynamic creative career, including time spent as a Design Educator for the Kohl’s Design It! Lab at Discovery World & the illustrator of two published children’s books.

Ben Dembroski
Managing Director of Emerging Technologies Center & Institutional Labs

Ben Dembroski is a visual artist and technologist based in Milwaukee, Wi. He received his BFA in Sculpture from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design in 2001 and his MFA from the Glasgow School of Art (2004). In 2014, he returned to MIAD, spearheading the formation of MIAD’s Emerging Technology Program, housed within the Lubar Emerging Technology Center.

Kayle Karbowski
Lab Technician – Rapid Prototyping

Kayle Karbowski resides on the southwestern bluffs of Lake Michigan. Their primary understanding of cultural identity comes from her paternal grandmother- Karbowski is of the 5th generation of her Italian ancestors who immigrated to Chicago in the 1800’s. She is the earthly entity of Other Dust, a psychospiritual consultancy and technoapothecary.

Adam Lefebvre
3D Lab Supervisor

Adam Lefebvre is a studio potter and multi-discipline artist who grew up in Regina, Saskatchewan, in the heart of the Canadian prairies. Adam earned an MFA in ceramics at Utah State University. While in Utah, Adam met Autumn. Following his graduation, they moved to Autumn’s home state of Wisconsin where they now work out of their studio in Dousman. Adam has participated in a number of artist residencies and exhibited his work across Canada, in Denmark and the United States.

Hannah Schmidt
Library Circulation Coordinator

Hannah Schmidt is a photographer, writer, and self-professed dabbler across multiple media. She is currently attending UW-Milwaukee for a master’s degree in library and information science and completed an undergraduate degree in Art Therapy from Alverno College in 2014. Her photographic work is driven by an emotional response to the interplay of light and shadow on form and space, and explores how they interact with the body, movement, and objects.

Mariah Tate Klemens
Textiles Lab Technician

Mariah Tate Klemens was born and raised in Seattle, WA. She received her BFA from Western Washington University in Mixed-Media Sculpture in 2013. She has exhibited in the Northwest, Mexico, and in the Midwest. Klemens received her MA & MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work articulates domesticity through pattern and abstraction.

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.

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.

Adam Porter
Drawing, Printmaking ’11

Adam Porter is an interdisciplinary artist, printmaker, and filmmaker currently residing in Los Angeles. He graduated with an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and was previously based in NYC working as a studio manager for Marilyn Minter. His work takes elements from pastiche fantasies, natural phenomena, and properties of light and transforms them into speculative queer utopias.

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.

Jason Santiago
Photography ’10

Jason Santiago was born in Milwaukee Wisconsin in 1986. He studied at The Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and graduated in 2010 with a BFA in photography. Santiago currently lives and works in San Diego, California. His work in photography centers around people and the public space. You can view his work online at jasonsantiagophoto.com or @santiago_bside.

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.

Justin Thao
Industrial Design ’14

Justin Thao grew up from the lower class in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. At a young age, art was just a fun activity. Knowing the fundamentals of folding paper was second nature to him, but it puzzled him when others did not relate. One fold after another led to the discovery of his talent, but it was just a hobby and nothing else. What really propelled him to grow his hobby into a career was the sight of a large folded corrugated structure, sitting on top of a desk at MIAD. He recreated that structure for carrying convenience that gave him a moment of great insight, like a strong fresh wind. It opened a passageway to all of the ideas that origami could do. After graduation at MIAD, he joined the team at the headlight department in General Motors. He became self-inspired to explore origami at home. Only six months later when he started, he led himself to incorporate his origami ideations for GM car headlights. His coworkers and managers were astounded, but the company’s rejection of his complex ideas left him feeling empty. He knew that the pursuit of his own business would give me more credit for his work. The long journey of building a lighting company named Incredifold LLC has come to fruition, ready to shed light onto the world.

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.

Karen Williams-Brusubardis
Painting ’98

Karen Williams-Brusubardis is a mixed Bolivian-American born and raised in rural western Wisconsin. After high school, she moved to Milwaukee to attend the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design where she received her BFA in painting four years later. After MIAD, Karen continued her education at UWM, dabbling in anthropology and working in Development at the Milwaukee Public Museum. It was during this time that Karen was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome (now called Autism Spectrum Disorder) and encouraged by her therapist to spend more time in her painting studio as this was her instinctual outlet for expressing her special interests. What followed was an explosion of creativity and the beginning of her “Particle Landscape” series of acrylic paintings. Over the next 10 years, Karen has exhibited in many different venues throughout Wisconsin and participated in many art festivals where she has won several awards in the categories of painting and 2D Art. Today, Karen currently shares a studio with her husband on the 5th floor of the Marshall Building in Milwaukee’s Third Ward.