At UTSA School of Art, we take pride in all the accomplishments of our graduates and love seeing how they move forward in their art careers. Here are just a handful of the many stories of students who have thrived after completing their art degrees with us!
Casey Arguelles-Gregory
Casey Arguelles-Gregory is a painter, writer, and educator based in Houston, Texas.
She holds an MFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio (2009), and has exhibited widely throughout the region including solo and group shows at Hardin Simmons University (Abilene), Red Arrow Gallery (Dallas), Lawndale Art Center (Houston), Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum (San Antonio), and Sala Diaz (San Antonio 2015).
In 2011, she was the recipient of a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship. Arguelles Gregory blogs about looking at art with her two-year-old daughter at www.artstrollertx.com, and is a regular contributor to Arts + Culture Magazine.
Eden Collins
In 2012, Collins earned her Bachelor of Arts, Studio Art at Hope College, Holland MI, and her Master of Fine Arts, Studio Art at The University of Texas at San Antonio in 2018, where she won several scholarships including the Art Guys Endowment and high prizes 2 consecutive years in UTSA's Annual Student Juried Student Show.
Using playful exploration in photography, sculpture, video, and performance, her artwork challenges notions and modes of socialization as well as the construction of identity.
Collins taught sculpture at UTSA after graduation, and is now the Visiting Assistant Professor at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, TX.
In 2019, Collins was awarded the Berlin Residency through Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum at Künstlerhaus Bethanien. She has exhibited nationally and in San Antonio at Blue Star Contemporary, Hello Studio, and the San Antonio Museum of Art.
Jenelle Esparza
Jenelle Esparza (American, b. 1985) is an interdisciplinary artist who was born in the coastal city of Corpus Christi, TX. She attended the University of Texas at San Antonio and received her BFA in photography in 2010. She currently lives and works in San Antonio. She currently co-owns Presa House Gallery in Southtown and is the Head of Education at the McNay Art Museum.
Esparza examines the lesser-known history of cotton and labor in South Texas through photography and textiles and incorporates concepts of body movement, history, gender, identity, culture, and race. Her recent projects utilize textiles and found objects to explore the parallels between landscape and bodily experiences, and the implications of generational trauma.
Esparza has exhibited nationally in institutions such as The DePaul Art Museum in Chicago, IL; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and The Momentary in Bentonville, AR; and Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. She is the recipient of numerous honors including the 2015 National Association of Latino Arts and Culture (NALAC) Artist Grant, the Artpace International Artist Residency, and the National Performance Network Artist Engagement Fund. Her work is also included in the permanent collection of the San Antonio Museum of Art.
Sarah Fox
Fox's education consists of a BA from Southwestern University, Georgetown, TX (2005) in which she spent a year at the Glasgow School of Art in Glasgow, Scotland, and an MFA from The University of Texas at San Antonio (2015).
Sarah Fox’s multi-media narratives and characters are created from embodied female experience. Stories of life, loss, love, and sex are told through corporeal hybrid creatures. The resulting collages, drawings, sculptures, and animations suggest a childlike fairytale but with an undercurrent of dark sexual symbolism.
She won an Artist’s Grant and residency at Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT, as well as the Parent’s Residency Grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation/Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY, a residency at Casa Lu, Tlalpan, Mexico City, Mexico, the Atelierhaus Hilmsen Artist Residency in Hilmsen, Germany, and a residency at the Artist Lab in the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, San Antonio, TX.
She has exhibited nationally and internationally at galleries in Reading, PA, Riverside, CA, New Orleans, LA, New York, NY, Cincinnati, OH, Hilmsen, Germany, Vienna, Austria, Lanzarote, Canary Islands, as well as widely in Texas.
Fox is Co-Director at Clamp Light Artist Studios and Gallery, San Antonio, TX where she's curated several shows, and the Board Chair for Contemporary Art Month, San Antonio, TX. She has been an adjunct instructor at UTSA and Texas A&M, taught many community classes at Blue Star Contemporary, and is currently an Art Instructor for community classes at Southwest School of Art, San Antonio, TX. She also enjoys working with local high schools, giving lectures, and jurying art competitions.
Riley Robinson
Riley received his MFA in sculpture from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1994. In 2004, he did a residency at Nordisk Kunstnarsenter Dalssen, Dale i Sunnfjord.
He participated in numerous group exhibitions, including Twang, Art Museum of Southwest Texas, Beaumont (2004); The Locker Show, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond (2004); Process, KIASMA Nykytaiteen Museo, Helsinki, Finland (2003); and 10 X 3 Ten Contemporary San Antonio Artists, San Antonio Museum of Art, TX (2002).
He is the recipient of the Art Matters Fellowship Grant, Art Matters, New York, NY; and the Mid-America Arts Alliance/National Endowment for the Arts Assistance Award, Kansas City, MO.
Co-Author of Art at Our Doorstep: San Antonio Writers + Artists
Currently the Studio Director at San Antonio's Artpace, where he works with local, regional, and international artists in residence.
Raul Gonzalez
Raul Rene Gonzalez is a multi-dimensional visual artist who spends his time balancing an art career, being a stay-at-home parent, and fully operating an Airbnb/studio space Werk House SA. In addition to that, Raul also spends time as a guest lecturer, performer, and storybook reader at schools, universities, and other art institutions. Raul holds an MFA in Art from UTSA and a BFA in Painting from the University of Houston.
Originating from Houston and now working and living in San Antonio with his wife and daughters, Raul utilizes a wide array of mediums through versatile methods of painting, drawing, performance, installation, dance, and storytelling. Through his artwork, he explores topics such as work, labor, fatherhood, gender roles, identity, pop culture, and abstraction.
Raul’s artwork is exhibited regionally and nationally, including group or solo exhibitions at the McNay Art Museum, grayDUCK Gallery, Miami University Ohio, Artpace, Blue Star Contemporary, Lawndale Art Center, MACLA, Mexic-Arte Museum, and Queens University of Charlotte, among others. He has received several awards, including grants from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Luminaria Artist Foundation of San Antonio, NALAC, Dave Bown Projects, and a Surdna Foundation Grant through the Guadalupe Cultural Center. Raul has also completed an artist studio residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art and Modern Multiples in Los Angeles.
Gonzalez’s artwork is included in private collections throughout the US and public collections such as the National Museum of Mexican Art, Mexic-Arte Museum, McNay Art Museum, National Hispanic Cultural Center Art Museum, the University of Texas at San Antonio, The Woodlands High School Art Trust, The City of San Antonio, Capital One Financial Services, and the University Health System Del Rio Tower.
Jennings Sheffield
Jennings Sheffield was born in Richmond, Virginia. She graduated from the Atlanta College of Art in 1996 and completed her Master of Arts in Studio Art Photography in 2011 from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Sheffield is a contemporary artist working in lens-based media, video, and sound.
Her current work investigates the idea of collective imagery through re-appropriation. She is an internationally active artist with her latest work exhibited at The Print Center in Philadelphia; Houston Fine Art Fair; Colorado Photographic Arts Center; Orange County Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Ana, CA; B J Spoke Gallery in Huntington, New York; Lens Culture; Artspace 111 in Fort Worth, Texas; Newspace Center for Photography in Portland, Oregon; Living Arts of Tulsa; The ARTS at CIIS in San Francisco, California; Luminaria and Blue Star Contemporary in San Antonio, Texas; Pingyao International Photography Festival in China; McDonough Museum of Art in Youngstown, Ohio; Cambridge University (UK), and What Do You Really Need?, Median Kultur Haus Wels, Austria.
Sheffield is an Associate Professor of Art at Baylor University, and currently lives in Woodway, Texas, with her husband and two sons.
