CCAD announces new faculty appointments for fall 2019

Columbus College of Art & Design is pleased to announce new additions and promotions in our faculty ranks ahead of the fall 2019 semester. The new and promoted faculty members are:

John Cairns

Assistant Professor of Illustration & Master of Fine Arts

John Cairns teaches Motion for Illustration, Digital Sculpture for Illustration, and Intro to Programming for Visual Art to undergraduates students and Digital Culture to graduate students. Cairns has received several individual artist grants from the Ohio Arts Council and Greater Columbus Arts Council. He exhibits his interactive electronic works nationally and internationally. Cairns also works on illustrated children’s books and creates motion graphics for television. In addition to teaching, Cairns serves on the board of the Grove City Arts Council and is a member of Columbus’ Fuse Factory, a collection of experimental electronic artists. Cairns earned an Associate of Applied Science Graphic Communications Technology from Columbus State Community College in 2006; a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Ohio State University with a focus on Art and Technology in 2010; and a Master of Fine Arts in Electronic Arts degree from the University of Cincinnati in 2013. Check out Cairns’ work at johncairnsart.com, and follow Cairns on Instagram at @john_cairns_art and Youtube at www.youtube.com/keblur2050.

 

 

Craig Campbell 

Assistant Professor of Comics & Narrative Practice

Craig M Campbell is a multidisciplinary artist teaching comics, narrative practices, and illustration. He received his MFA in Comics at California College of the Arts and is a regular contributor to Hyperallergic. He has been published in several anthologies, journals, and websites, including San Francisco Sci-Fi and the Asian American Writers Workshop. Check out Campbell’s work at cmcampbellart.com, craigwho.com, and hyperallergic.com/author/cm-campbell, and follow him on Instagram at @mrcplcraig and Twitter at @mrcplcraig.

 

 

Michael Kellner

Associate Professor of CORE First Year

Michael Kellner has a BFA from the University of Louisville, an MFA from the DAAP program at the University of Cincinnati, and a PhD from The Ohio State University. For his artwork, he makes drawings and sound pieces by pulling apart the written scores of J.S. Bach and then putting them back together in systematic ways. He is inspired by iterative practices, graphic notation, and contemporary pop and avant-garde music. He also researches in the areas of care ethics, perception, and creativity, striving to not only think about what it means to bring something new into the world, but under what conditions the new is allowed to flourish. In addition to his research and art making practices, he is an associate editor for the FATE in Review Journal. Check out Kellner’s work at michaelkellnerart.com. 

 

 

Darren Lee Miller

Chair & Associate Professor of Photography

Darren Lee Miller is an artist, curator, and educator. He recently received a Fulbright Award for his proposed relational aesthetics/collaborative community art project at the São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Bauru, Brazil, in spring 2020. His teaching, curatorial work, and artwork have been recognized through residencies at Blue Mountain Center, the Vermont Studio Center, the Crawford County Historical Society, the University of Puerto Rico, and in regional and national exhibitions. His works have been acquired by Adirondack Experience, the Museum on Blue Mountain Lake. Union College, Allegheny College, the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission, and private collectors. He earned a BFA from The New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. Check out Miller’s work at darrenleemiller.com.

 

 

Audrey Nicolas

Assistant Professor of Fashion Design

Audrey Nicolas has been a fashion designer for more than 15 years and has extensive international experience in the fashion industry. She specializes in knitwear, and Michelle Obama wore one of her sweater designs during a speech in June 2014. Nicolas has designed for a number of large retail corporations, including Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, Mango, and White House Black Market. She has traveled overseas numerous times to work with factories and, over the years, developed a unique understanding of the fashion business and a broad knowledge of the global market with an emphasis on Womenswear, Menswear, and Youth. Her work has appeared in numerous fashion magazines, including WWD. Nicolas studied in France, her native country, and lived in Barcelona for eight years. Throughout her career, she has embraced the richness of different cultures as she travels around the globe. Those experiences gave the colors of who she is today. Nicolas earned a BA in Fashion Design from Atelier Chardon-Savard in Paris in 2002. She also studied Science of Languages during a year at the University of Orleans in France. Check out Nicolas’ work at asnicolas.weebly.com and on LinkedIn.

 

 

Dr. Jennifer Schlueter

Professor & Dean of Graduate Studies

Dr. Jennifer Schlueter is Professor and Dean of Graduate Studies at Columbus College of Art & Design. Schlueter is a performance maker motivated by a fascination with the limits and possibilities of the archive, and the challenges to fair use, copyright, and creative transformation that this work can engender. Her creative works, many of which transform found text into performance events, have been produced at the Little Theatre (Seattle), Cleveland Public Theatre, LexArts, American Theater Company (Chicago), Kranzberg Center (St. Louis), Grandstreet Theatre (Helena), Available Light Theatre (Columbus), the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Columbus Museum of Art, Tristan Bates (London), Off Broadway at 59E59 Theaters, and on BBC Radio 4. She was recently named an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award winner for FY 2019. Prior to coming to CCAD, Schlueter was an Associate Professor at The Ohio State University, where she founded and produced The Lab Series, a student-driven, department-nurtured performance research laboratory. There, she also served as a Project Director for the Social Change, Community Engagement, and Creative Practices Discovery Theme and a Faculty Fellow in Curriculum at the Graduate School. Schlueter holds a bachelor’s degree in Theatre from Truman State University, and a master’s degree and a doctorate in Theatre from The Ohio State University. Check out Schlueter’s work at jenniferschlueter.com, and follow her on Twitter at @schlueter_j and Instagram at @jen_schlueter, and LinkedIn.

 

Ben Towle

Assistant Professor of Comics & Narrative Practice

Ben Towle is a four-time Eisner-nominated cartoonist currently working on his next graphic novel, Four Fisted Tales, a collection of true-life stories of animals in combat forthcoming from Dead Reckoning, the graphic novel imprint of The Naval Institute Press. His previous work, the rollicking nautical fantasy comic, Oyster War, was published by Oni Press in 2015. His other work includes Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean (with Sarah Stewart Taylor), a graphic novel for young adults (Disney/Hyperion Books 2010), which received accolades from such publications as The New York Times and Publishers Weekly and was a Junior Library Guild selection, as well as the historical fiction graphic novel Midnight Sun and a volume of comics folk tales, Farewell, Georgia. He has taught comics, art, and illustration at The Savannah College of Art and Design, The University of North Carolina School for the Arts, and The Sawtooth School for Visual Art, among other places. Check out Towle’s work at benzilla.com and portfolio.benzilla.com, and follow him on Twitter at @ben_towle.

 

 

 

 

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We have some other exciting news, too. Comics & Narrative Practice Associate Professor Emi Gennis and Industrial Design Assistant Professor John Youger are serving as the co-presidents of Faculty Council. 

 

Other job changes of note include:

• Professor Kelly Malec-Kosak is now the Chair of Master of Fine Arts
• Professor Tim Rietenbach is now the Chair of Contemporary Crafts and Fine Arts
• Department Head of Business, Math & Entrepreneurship Sapna Singh is now an Assistant Professor.
• Assistant Professor Sonya Fix is now Director of Liberal Arts, taking over the rotating role from Josh Butts.
• Department Head of Writing, Literature & Philosophy Josh Butts and  Comics & Narrative Practice’s Emi Gennis and Laurenn McCubbin have been promoted from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor.

• Dr. Jeannine Kraft, Chair of Studio Art with an Emphasis in the History of Art & Visual Culture, has been promoted from Associate Professor to Professor.

Here’s some news about upcoming sabbaticals:

• In fall 2019, Advertising & Graphic Design Associate Professor Mark Burleigh, Interior Architecture & Design Professor Joel Gundlach, Fine Arts Professor Kathy McGhee, Writing, Literature & Philosophy Associate Professor Robert Loss, and Photography Professor Duncan Snyder will be on sabbatical.

In spring 2020, Fine Arts and Contemporary Crafts Associate Professor Julie Abijanac, CORE Studies Associate Professor Alice Frenz, and Advertising & Graphic Design Associate Professor Matthew Mohr will be on sabbatical.