Faculty: The Division of Art faculty is a diverse group of visual artists who exhibit regionally, nationally, and internationally. They are painters, sculptors, photographers, scholars, printmakers and illustrators. Of the twelve faculty, five have won teaching awards.

James W. Sullivan
Professor of Sculpture and Chair, Division of Art
M.F.A., California State University
James Sullivan has exhibited around the world, including solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and Germany. He has taught as a Visiting Professor in Berlin and has served as a Visiting Critic in drawing at the Yale School of Architecture since 1984. He has received two university awards for teaching. Read more.

Peter Beasecker
Associate Professor of Art
M.F.A., Alfred University
Peter Beasecker is an Associate Professor of Art at the Meadows School of the Arts, where he has been teaching since 1992. He has exhibited internationally and his work is in numerous private and public collections, including the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Mint Museum in North Carolina. Read more.

Rebecca Carter
Assistant Professor
M.F.A., The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Rebecca Carter joined the SMU faculty in the fall of 2005 after graduating with an M.F.A. in Fiber and Material Studies from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005. Read more.

Charles DeBus
Senior Lecturer in Photography
B.F.A., University of Dallas
Charles DeBus studied with Ansel Adams and Robert Heimecken and has been teaching photography since the mid 1960’s. His work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally and is included in numerous public and private collections. Read more.

Barnaby Fitzgerald
Professor of Drawing and Painting
M.F.A., Yale University
Barnaby Fitzgerald has taught drawing and painting at SMU since 1984. His professional traning began in Urbino, Italy with further studies at the Museum School in Boston, Boston University and Yale University. His work is part of public collections among which are the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Yale Art Gallery Print Collection, and private collections in the United States and Europe. His illustrations, decorations, and book covers have been published both in the United States and abroad. Read more.

Debora Hunter
Associate Professor of Photography
M.F.A., Rhode Island School of Design
Debora Hunter has taught at SMU since 1976. She has exhibited her photographs at the Art Institute of Chicago, Hirshhorn Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Dallas Museum of Art, The Light Faculty, George Eastman House and Corcoran Museum of Art. In 2002, she completed a permanent public art installation of eight art panels for the Dallas Area Rapid Transit’s light rail station at Skillman and LBJ Freeway. Read more.

Robin Koch
Associate Professor of Painting
M.F.A., University of Washington
Professor Koch has taught at the Meadows School since 1970. His works have been exhibited across the United States and are represented in numerous public and private collections. Read more.

Bill Komodore
Professor of Art
M.F.A., Tulane University
Bill Komodore was born in Athens, Greece, and has taught at SMU for over fifteen years. He is represented by the Gerald Peters Gallery in Dallas, and his work is in many private and public collections, including the Dallas Museum of Art, the Barrett Collection, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Whitney Museum in New York. Read more.

Vanessa Paschakarnis
Assistant Professor of Sculpture
M.F.A. (Sculpture), Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee, Berlin, Germany
M.F.A. (Fine and Media Arts), NSCAD University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Vanessa Paschakarnis has exhibited her work, sculpture and drawing, in Europe, the United States and Canada. Originally from Germany, she lived and worked for the past 7 years in Canada, and, since 2002, she has twice worked for extended periods of time in Italy on large-scale sculpture in Pietrasanta, Italy. Read more.

Laurence Scholder
Professor of Printmaking
M.A., University of Iowa
Laurence Scholder, Professor of Art, has been teaching printmaking since 1968. He has had 17 solo exhibitions of his work at such institutions as The Contemporary Art Museum in Houston and The Modern Art Museum of Ft. Worth, and has been included in over 100 group exhibitions. His work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Brooklyn Museum, the Modern Art Museum of Ft. Worth, the Houston Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, and other museums throughout the country. Read more.

Noah Simblist
Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing
M.F.A., University of Washington
Noah Simblist has been teaching at SMU since the fall of 2003. He has also taught at Hampshire College and at the University of Washington in Seattle. His interests include Jewish iconography and a relationship between image, architecture and text. Read more.

Philip Van Keuren
Associate Professor of Art and Curatorial Studies
M.F.A., Southern Methodist University
Philip Van Keuren has taught foundation, sculpture and printmaking classes at SMU since 1989. As director of the Division of Art’s Pollock Gallery, he has organized and curated over 60 exhibitions since 1990 and designed and written nearly thirty exhibition publications during that same period. As an artist, he has participated in over 50 solo and group exhibitions since 1971, including numerous exhibitions at the Dallas Museum of Art, and a group exhibition at the Alternative Museum in New York City in 1983. Read more.

Mary Vernon
Professor of Drawing and Painting
M.A., University of New Mexico
Professor Vernon's chief concerns as a painter are the geometry of landscape, the interaction of colors, and the expanding nature of content. But it is as a teacher and a speaker (among small or large groups) that she finds entertainment, a sense of the flow of spirit among people, and just that degree of civilized danger that makes life interesting. Her works have been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad. In 2003, the Art in Embassies Program of The State Department invited her to serve as their visiting artist in Santiago, Chile. Read more.