2025 Creative Arts Awards Recipients

Erika Meitner
Erika Meitner is the author of six books of poems, including Ideal Cities (Harper Perennial, 2010)—a 2009 National Poetry Series winner; Holy Moly Carry Me (BOA Editions, 2018), winner of the 2018 National Jewish Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry; and Useful Junk (BOA Editions, 2022), a finalist for the Wisconsin Library Association Literary Award. Meitner’s poems have been anthologized widely, and have appeared most recently in The New Yorker, Poetry, Electric Literature, Virginia Quarterly Review, Oxford American, The New Republic, Orion, and elsewhere. Other honors include fellowships from MacDowell, Loghaven Artist Residency, the US-UK Fulbright Commission, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, T.S. Eliot House, Marble House Project, and Bethany Arts Community. Meitner is currently a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she also directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing.

Derrick Buisch
A painting professor in Madison since 1997, Derrick Buisch has exhibited in many national and regional gallery and museum exhibitions including; the Tory Folliard Gallery, James Watrous Gallery, and Wisconsin Triennials. Buisch served as the Chair of the Art Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2020-2023. A large selection of Buisch’s work was included in a major two-person show, “Sonic Disruptions”, with painter Laurie Hogin at the Rockford Art Museum in 2020. Two site-specific paintings from the 2020 Faculty Exhibition at the Chazen Museum of Art, were added to the permanent collection. Buisch is a recipient of a 2017 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant.

Fatemeh Fani
Fatemeh Fani (b. 1992) is a MFA student in photography at UW-Madison. She is a recipient of 2023 Glenn R. Allen Graduate Student Scholarship in Art Fund, 2024 Graduate Student Creative Arts Award and 2025 Lyman S.V. Judson and Ellen Mackechnie Judson Graduate Student Award in the Creative Arts. Born in Iran, she currently lives in the United States. Fatemeh is a documentary photographer, researcher and activist, with her research focusing on women, sexual minorities and immigrants to express how in traditional societies such as Iran these groups are deprived of fundamental rights and freedom of expression. As a recent woman immigrant to the U.S., she is documenting the essence of America through the lens of an outsider from an Islamic country with a distinct cultural background. Fatemeh is working on a personal archival photographs, aimed at challenging the concept of mandatory hijab and the stolen identity of Iranian women. Her intention is to raise awareness and draw attention to the prevailing restrictions, exclusions, and discriminations that affect a significant portion of her country’s populace, with a particular focus on the challenges faced by women.

Carly “Car” Riegger
Carly “Car” Riegger (they/them) is a chronically ill and disabled artist from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Since finding clay, they have been able to express their illness in ways that words could not. Their artwork naturally merged with their experiences with disability. Car received a BFA in Ceramics from Bowling Green State University in 2020. They completed a Post-Baccalaureate in Ceramics at Indiana University-Southeast in 2023. Their biggest project included a panel and exhibition called #CripClay which was featured at NCECA in Cincinnati, OH in 2023. This exhibition included all artists with disabilities, which was the first of its kind at the conference. Car is also the recipient of the 2025 Midwest Artists with Disabilities Award. Currently, they are pursuing an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Both Car’s artwork and career goals involve disability inclusion and rights. They are working to expand how the arts communities work with artists with disabilities and how disability communities utilize art to express complex disabled ideas.

Jackelin Espinosa Moyotl
Jackelin Espinosa Moyotl (Born 2000 in Huejotzingo, Mexico) is a multi-disciplinary artist. She received her BFA and minor in Art History from Herron School of Art and Design in 2023. Moyotl is a Lecturer and currently pursuing an MFA at University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has Exhibited in Newfields Indianapolis Museum of Art, Munoz Gallery in Long Beach, Pilsen Arts and Community House, in Chicago and in El Paso Print. Moyotl’s work focuses on the experiences of being undocumented and its impact on family and daily life. Although her research is centered around her family’s narrative, it reflects the shared experiences of four million undocumented immigrants. Through labor-intensive process, such as printmaking and weaving, that directly references a history and culture of working with one’s hands. Moyotl’s research explores archiving, the altering/erasure of undocumented Mexican immigrants and decolonizing through materials.

Keslie Pharis
An oboist from Amarillo, Texas, Keslie Pharis has recently performed with the Madison Symphony Orchestra, Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra, Quad City Symphony Orchestra, Sheboygan Symphony Orchestra, Dubuque Symphony Orchestra, and Madison Bach Musicians. Her playing is strongly influenced by her extensive background with ballet, and she enjoys teaching at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and through her private studio. A doctoral candidate and Teaching Assistant at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Keslie holds a Master of Music degree from UW-Madison, where she held a Paul J. Collins Distinguished Graduate Fellowship, and a Bachelor of Music degree from Indiana University, where she was a recipient of the Jacobs School of Music Premiere Young Artist Award. Passionate about arts administration and community engagement, Keslie holds a Master of Business Administration degree from West Texas A&M University and is pursuing a doctoral minor in arts administration.

Noa Rickey
Noa Rickey is an artist, performer, and educator. Born and raised in Minnesota to a family of artists, they grew up with a deep appreciation of craft and fine art making. Noa received a BFA in Drama from NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a minor in Irish Studies and currently is a second-year MFA candidate in Design Studies at UW-Madison. With an interdisciplinary approach, Noa explores the stories people keep close to their bodies. They have worked as a Research Assistant for the Design Studies Hemp Lab, a production assistant for Marianne Fairbanks and Mary Hark, and have taught an array of textile practices to undergraduate and graduate students at UW and in the community. In the summer of 2024, they received a fellowship and funding to research Irish lace and culture in Ireland. Noa is currently focused on creating works for their second-year exhibition, to be shown at Memorial Union 1925 Gallery in April, 2025.

Anne E. Stoner
Anne E. Stoner is an interdisciplinary artist and social ethnographer focusing in sonic practice. Her work brings about and coalesces studies in bodily complexities and disability studies, human geographical theories and psychogeographies, contemporary methodologies in ethnographic archiving and queer anthropology, new possibilities within technology and studies within human movement and routine, to create a practice with an empathetic methodology that challenges visual standards within 21st century artmaking. Anne holds an undergraduate MA(h) from the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh College of Art and an MA from Northwestern University. In 2023 she began working toward an MFA in 4D Studio Art from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Website: https://anneestoner.cargo.site/”

Mariah Moneda
Mariah Moneda (b.1997) received her BFA from Arizona State University in Photography in 2019 and is an interdisciplinary artist and educator, currently pursuing her MFA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she is an Education Graduate Research Fellow (EdGR’s) instructor on record, and a recipient of the Theodora Herfulth Kubly Minority Fellowship. Working with photography, installation, and social practice, Mariah draws on her lived experience as a first-generation, Filipino-American woman, investigating the connection between memory and the body’s senses, world-building through her nuanced relationship with labor, ritual, and belonging. With this lens she leans into the experiential and utilizes her practice as a tool to explore the liminal space between herself, the landscape, and the community.

Blue Rachapradit
Blue Rachapradit is a Thai interdisciplinary artist who creates sites for communal contemplation and mourning as feminist and decolonial resistance against power structures. Combining poetry, performance, and installation, Blue explores the body as an archival praxis of the personal and the political. She is currently an Art MFA candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She received her undergraduate Arts & Literature degree from Minerva University. Her works have been exhibited in multiple parts of the world – from Seoul, Bangkok to Dubai.

Orion Risk
Orion Risk is an artist and PhD Candidate in Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, specializing in performance studies and feminist care theory. Their scholarship appears in Performance Research and Latin American Theatre Review and has been recognized by the Mid-America Theatre Conference (Emerging Scholar), National Communication Association (Top Student Paper – Performance Studies), and the UW Division of the Arts (Judson Graduate Student Award in the Creative Arts). Their practice-based, community-engaged research has been supported by UW Center for Research on Gender and Women, the Cornell University School of Criticism and Theory, and the Center for the Humanities. Orion holds two MA degrees from the University of Wisconsin–Madison (Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies; Gender and Women’s Studies) and a BA from the University of Northern Iowa. They are a member of the UW Ethics of Care Initiative and the Bouchet Graduate Honor Society.

Ava Albelo
Ava Albelo is a senior in the UW-Madison BFA Program studying Painting and Drawing. Moving from Miami to Madison, she became interested in the extremely active punk and DIY scene in the area. She has worked as a freelance illustrator for several years doing designs for Madison, Milwaukee and LA-based music acts. In addition, Albelo currently works at Wheelhouse Studios assisting the facilitation of group events. Her work explores vulnerability through mortifying recollections, distortions of reality, and fantasy that disappoints the mundane.

Ava Schueller
Ava Schueller is a fourth-year undergraduate student studying Textile Design at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Previously earning her Bachelors of Science in Economics, her position at the Helen Louise Allen Textile Collection reinforced her passion for material culture and encouraged her to pursue a new path. As a textile design student, Ava enjoys the opportunity to work with physical mediums in order to gain a deeper understanding of the design process. Her work often explores the relationships between the materials being used. In 2024, she was a finalist in the Sergenian’s Rug Design Competition and was invited to contribute artwork to be displayed in the From Fiber to Hand exhibition at the Textile Art Center in Madison.