School of Visual Arts welcomes five new faculty members

The Penn State School of Visual Arts welcomed five new faculty members for the 2024–25 academic year: Beatrice Atencah, assistant teaching professor; Kumasi J. Barnett, assistant professor of art (drawing and painting); Austin Caskie, assistant teaching professor; Michelle Inez Hinojosa, assistant professor of art (drawing and painting); and Di Tian, assistant teaching professor.

Originally from Ghana, West Africa, Beatrice Atencah creates fiber sculpture and site-specific installation artworks that explore the nexus of fiber and metal sculpture in Africa and America, and the histories pertaining to cultural acculturation. She has exhibited across the United States, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. Her current curatorial project, "Interlacing in Textiles," is on view at the Eskenazi Museum of Art at the University of Indiana-Bloomington, where she obtained her M.F.A. in fibers.

Kumasi J. Barnett is influenced by the aesthetics and narratives of comic books, and his work subverts and imbues the often timeless genre with a present-day social consciousness. He frequently paints directly over old copies of comic books, changing their narratives into critiques of police brutality, racial profiling, and more broadly, systemic racism. Barnett’s works have been exhibited widely both in the United States and abroad, most recently at The Peale Museum in Baltimore. His work has been featured in Artforum, Ammo, Vibe, Hyperallergic, Huffington Post, Autre, Artnet News, and The Guardian, among others. He received his M.F.A. from The Ohio State University.

Austin Caskie is a designer and artist who focuses on games and painting. He models, animates, and codes to create video games and other digital experiences. Illustrative painting and 2D design also play a big part in Caskie's practice, which strives to find commonalities across design languages. He previously taught courses in 3D modeling and game art at the University of Delaware and North Carolina State University. Caskie holds a Master of Design Studies from the North Carolina State University College of Design, where he focused on designing for virtual reality.

Michelle Inez Hinojosa is an artist, educator, and researcher whose work is informed by Indigenous and Latine/x/a/o studies. Born and raised in Texas, she earned her B.F.A. degree in both drawing & painting and art education with a minor in art history at the University of North Texas. She holds an M.F.A. from the University of Michigan. Hinojosa works with quilting, bead weaving, embroidery, jewelry, transparent film installations, painting, ceramics, and sculpture to honor and explore the history of migration in her family and humanize the current discourse around migration still occurring at the southern border. Alongside her artwork she maintains a writing practice to re-story, re-make, and re-claim the often subordinated narratives of Latinx, Chicanx, Mexican, and Texican peoples.