Four School of Art Faculty, Staff and Students Awarded Prestigious Statewide Arts Fellowship

The School of Art in the University of Arkansas Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences is proud to announce that four of its members have been awarded Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowships. 

Represented at all levels--faculty, staff and students--the awardees include assistant professor of Foundations Jean Schmitt, equipment technician Andrew Blackwell, assistant director of communications Elizabeth Muscari and MFA candidate Serena Caffrey. 

The Individual Artist Fellowship grants are unconditional, nonmatching awards made directly to Arkansas creatives. Independent panels annually select artists from six categories to receive $5,000 each. About 150 artists applied this year in the categories of multisensory art, community engagement, contemporary craft with a wood component, dance choreography, poetry and public arts. Fellows will be honored at a reception in Little Rock in February. 

"This honor reflects the breadth of creative practices flourishing at the School of Art and the impact our artists are making across Arkansas. We're proud to see the state recognize members of our community at every level: faculty, staff and students," said Director of the School of Art Rachel Debuque. "Their achievements speak to the collaborative and open culture that drives artistic excellence at our school. We're excited to see their work celebrated on such an important stage." 

About the Fellows 

Jean Schmitt - Multisensory Art 

School of Art assistant professor of foundations Jean Schmitt's studio research is inspired by nature's collaborative communities, such as the subterranean rhizosphere where roots, microbes, worms and fungi work together to produce healthy soil. Through graphite drawing, ceramic sculpture and living components like soil, plants and worms, she creates immersive experiences in which multiple senses work together to help people understand complex environmental systems. 

Her VermiForms series merges vermicomposting processes with historical decorative arts traditions. Large-scale, stacking porcelain tureens function as both worm composting systems and sculptural forms, engaging visitors through touch, smell, sight and taste. These pieces demonstrate how artistic traditions can be transformed to address contemporary environmental challenges while creating more accessible and equitable art experiences. 

Schmitt says engaging multiple senses in her work creates deeper connections—between people and ecological processes, between visitors with different abilities and between individual actions and community resilience. 

"This fellowship recognizes the power of multisensory art to create accessible experiences for all audiences. Working with living systems—composting worms, growing wheatgrass and creating functional ceramic vessels—I've discovered how engaging multiple senses naturally breaks down barriers between art and viewer." 

She says the support will allow her to expand her community-centered practices and create more opportunities for people to experience the links between environment and community. 

Andrew MacRae Blackwell - Contemporary Craft (Wood Component) 

Andrew MacRae Blackwell's practice blends traditional craft with contemporary approaches, working across woodworking, metal fabrication, upholstery and jewelry making. 

The School of Art equipment technician has a background in carpentry that informs his attention to ergonomics, spatial logic and human-centered design. Blackwell creates sculptural and functional works that consider how environments shape memory, behavior and community experience. 

"I'm honored to receive an Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship. Having been born and raised in central Arkansas, with family from the Delta and now living in Northwest Arkansas, I carry the full breadth of the state's landscapes and traditions into my woodworking and mixed-media practice," he said. 

Blackwell noted that, at its core, carpentry is an extended study of people—how individuals inhabit rooms, move through thresholds and experience comfort or barriers in the built environment. This understanding of ergonomics, ADA logic and affordance shapes his design and sculptural approaches. 

Throughout his career, he has exhibited regionally and nationally, collaborated on public art installations and contributed to community-engaged projects that explore material language and shared experience. With the additional support from the council, Blackwell will continue his work, which he hopes can foster dialogue and serve as a form of care, connection and a catalyst within communities. 

Elizabeth Muscari - Literary Arts (Poetry) 

School of Art assistant director of communications Elizabeth Muscari's poetry examines the links between women and nature. She explores environmental and health challenges in Arkansas. Her work reflects her family's experiences surviving natural disasters, living in cancer clusters and navigating the state's ecological realities. 

"As the Natural State, Arkansas is made of the things pastoral poetry illustrates; however, my poetry contorts and remolds the pastoral. My poems use erasure and contrapuntal techniques, anti-pastoral series and concrete forms that take the shape of DNA and rivers with words evaporating on the page to mimic the water cycle. I detail ecological degradation and health risks we experience," she said. Muscari noted that her poems illustrate what public health and environmental data cannot: personal and historical stories that show how the connections between women and land's wellness. 

"I am a firm believer in art and wellness," Muscari added. "Intertwined in my health-focused poetry is a fierce love for Arkansas and a belief that it takes all of us—scientists, doctors, data analysts and artists—to build a healthier and more sustainable future for the natural world and the people living in it." 

Serena Caffrey - Multisensory Art 

Serena Caffrey's multivalent creative practice interrogates time, spatial orientation and our felt belonging to self, land and community. An MFA candidate at the School of Art, they use materials and stories to understand where their learning must deepen, treating performance as a container of presence that allows them to engage nonlinearly with time and space, tapping into embodied resonances of a site beyond living memory. Photography, film, printmaking, writing, handmade paper, ceramics and song are among the strategies they use to archive and expand upon their durational performances. 

"I'm grateful for the Arkansas Arts Council's recognition of my existing work, which serves as a springboard for projects to come, including my upcoming MFA thesis exhibition at the University of Arkansas School of Art's Windgate Studio and Design Center from Jan. 19-30, 2026," Caffrey said. "Having spent many years out of state, it's an honor to share and be recognized for my work within the context of my home." 

Caffrey's recent works in handmade paper combine the Western-style table-formed sheets with a conceptual interest in language as a sign and symbol that is mutable and can be easily rearranged. The words they spell are integral to the sheet and can be read from both verso and recto. In their materiality and spatial presence, these paper-based imperatives inhabit the world of the body, not just the hands and the eyes. They're distended poems that have become objects in space—incarnate. Caffrey will further activate these objects by engaging with them over the course of the exhibition period, destabilizing the formality and finality of a single installation and instead emphasizing the continuous and changing nature of perception. Caffrey notes that this work prompts them to consider artists' responsibilities in turning material knowledge toward building more livable futures. 

For the full list of fellowship recipients and more information about the Arkansas Arts Council, visit www.arkansasheritage.com. 

 

About the Artists 

Jean Schmitt is an artist and educator creating multisensory experiences that connect environmental processes with community resilience. Her VermiForms series reimagines 18th-century porcelain tureens as functional worm composting systems, engaging visitors through sight, touch, smell and taste. As assistant professor of foundations at the U of A School of Art, she co-founded the Prairie Pedagogy Research Group and collaborates with Indigenous communities to explore alternative ways of making and knowing. 

Andrew MacRae Blackwell is a woodworker, sculptor and mixed-media artist born and raised in Little Rock, now based in Northwest Arkansas. He holds an MFA in furniture design and woodworking from San Diego State University and a BFA in applied design, woodworking from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. 

Elizabeth Muscari holds an MFA in creative writing from the U of A. An interdisciplinary artist, her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, The Texas Review and Muzzle Magazine, among others. Her poetry has been a finalist for the Olive B. O'Connor Fellowship at Colgate University and the Hughes Fellowship at Southern Methodist University. She is a recipient of an Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, Artists 360 Practicing Artist grant and the Walton Family & Carolyn F. Walton Cole Fellowship in Poetry. Muscari is also a dancer and performs with the Vibe professional dance company. She has been commissioned for choreography and performances with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Medium and NWA Dance Collective, among others. Learn more at www.elizabethmuscari.com.

Serena Caffrey is a visual artist, educator,  grant writer, arts worker and consultant. They are a graduate of Bard College (2016), where their thesis performance gained numerous honors. Caffrey was a 2025 Watershed Center for Ceramics Invited Artist and is a contributor to The Brooklyn Rail, CARLA, Artillery Mag and Emergency INDEX. Their recent Terra Foundation-funded convening program titled Resounding Sovereign Expressions: Resurgent Indigenuity in Ozark Arts Practice & Scholarship, co-curated with Aaron Turner and Elise Boulanger, gathered over 20 contemporary Indigenous artists, musicians, activists and scholars to visualize collective memories and Indigenous futurities in the land currently known as Northwest Arkansas.  

Caffrey's drawing and print work has been exhibited internationally in Milan and Kyoto, and their performances have premiered at the Gowanus Ballroom in Brooklyn, The Mortuary Los Angeles and The Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles. Caffrey is currently pursuing their MFA at the U of A, located in their hometown. In addition to serving as a graduate Instructor of Record in the Printmaking Department, they also teach at alternative schools for somatic education, supporting others in the importance of setting and respecting self-limits in our creative and movement-building work.