Our Faculty & Staff

David Christiana

David teaches illustration at the University of Arizona School of Art. He is a New York Times Best Selling illustrator of more than twenty picture books (four of which he also authored) for a variety of international publishers including Scholastic; Little, Brown; Simon and Schuster; and Disney Publishing Worldwide. His work has been recognized by the Societies of Illustrators (New York and Los Angeles), Communication Arts, American Illustration, Applied Arts Magazine and Spectrum and has been exhibited across the globe. Reviews of his books can be found in The Horn Book Magazine, Book Links, Publishers Weekly, The New York Times Book Review, People Magazine and others.

Karen Zimmermann

has specialized in the digital arts since the mid 1980s. She has worked in animation, design, and art using predominantly digital process. She has published and lectured extensively about the combination of art and technology and new media. She has recently developed a seminar in New Media theory and is actively involved with the College Art Association, serving on the Student Emerging Professional Committee. She is also on the Board of Advisors for the Phoenix Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts. Her work has been seen in AIGA Loop, The Education of a E Designer, Adobe Magazine, FATE, SIGGRAPH, and Zed.

Philip Zimmermann

Phil Zimmermann teaches illustration, animation and visual narrative/artists’ books in the Visual Communication program at the University of Arizona. He draws, photographs, writes, and makes time-based media with those materials. He has won a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Lily Auchincloss Foundation Fellow, and numerous other awards. His work is in the Museum of Modern Art Special Collections as well as the collections at Art Institute of Chicago, RISD, Yale, Harvard, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Biblioteque Nationale in Paris and many other collections.

Kelly Leslie

Kelly is currently chair of the Visual Communications Division at the University of Arizona, where she teaches beginning design, advanced typography, and web design. In addition to freelance design work she also exhibits her charcaol drawings, book art, and other works on paper.

Ellen McMahon

Ellen teaches design and illustration in the visual communications program and concept development in the School of Art graduate program. She has a BS in Scientific Illustration from the University of Arizona and an MFA in Visual Art and Culture for Vermont College. Her concept driven work, inspired y daily domestic life and popular culture, takes many forms including photography, drawing, writing, book arts and video. Her work has been exhibited widely and is in the artist book collections of the New York Public Library, The Boston Public Library and the Center for Creative Photography. Her writing is published in Clean New World: Culture, Politics and Graphic Design, Mother Reader: Essential Writings in Motherhood, n.paradoxa and an upcoming anthology from the University of Arizona press.

Cerese Vaden

Cerese joined the UA faculty in 2000, and took a hiatus in 2001 to serve as Director of Landfall Press in Chicago, IL. Returning in 2002, her teaching responsibilities include printmaking, watercolor, mixed media books, and drawing. A member of the Southern Graphics Council and the Mid-America Print Association, Vaden works in etching, relief, watercolor, and mixed media assemblages. Her works have been exhibited across the United States and abroad. At the University of Arizona, Cerese Vaden is responsible for the Intaglio Program.

Dr. Claudio Bizzari

Claudio has a long record of achievements as director and collaborator on numerous Etruscan and Roman archaeological excavations, as an author of articles on classical archaeology; he was the American Institute of Archaeology Kress Foundation Lecturer for 2001-2002 and he is contract researcher at the University of Macerata. He received his doctorate from the University of Perugia. With Alba, Claudio coordinates the various trips for the program, leading many of the tours himself and teaching archeological classes during the year.

Dr. Alba Frascarelli

Alba is the Institute's bilingual administrative and program coordinator. She handles daily inquiries from students as well as faculty, coordinates all of the field trips, tours and activities, in addition to teaching classes of her own. Alba also acts as a knowledgeable and informative guide on many of the trips. She has extensive experience as a classical archaeologist on numerous Italian excavations in the Orvieto area.

James A. Cook

James A. Cook is currently Chair of the 3-D Division in the School of Art at the University of Arizona. He received his B.F.A. degree from the University of California at Berkeley and M.F.A. degree from the California College of the Arts. His sculpture and video work have been extensively exhibited nationally and internationally, and he has participated in residencies, conferences, and symposia in the United States, Spain, India, Nepal, Japan, and Bulgaria. He has received numerous grants and fellowships, including the Fulbright Regional Research Fellowship to the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, the Freeman Foundation Fellowship to India and Nepal, the Asian Cultural Council Fellowship (Rockefeller Foundation) to Japan, and the Arizona Commission for the Arts.

Dr. Sarah Moore

Moore teaches American and European Art from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is the author of, among other writings, John White Alexander and the Construction of National Identity: Cosmopolitan American Art 1880-1915,2003. Her research interests include turn-of-the-twentieth century visual culture of the United States, with an emphasis on national identity, institutional history, and art in the public sphere.

Jackson Boelts

Jackson is a designer and artist who has won numerous international, national and regional awards for his design work. He has recently exhibited his posters in the Czech Republic, Moscow, Mexico City, Poland and The Colorado International Invitational Poster Exhibition. His work has been included in Graphis, Novum, Print, How, and Studio magazines and Trademarks and LogoTypes of the World. He was recently awarded the Tucson Advertising Professional of the Year by the Tucson Advertising Federation.