VISUAL ARTS DIVISION
The Visual Arts Division offers courses in fourteen different areas of study in the fine arts and crafts and the history of those academic disciplines to focus and develop you as a thinker, dreamer, writer, artist, and overall, an educated human being. The courses will challenge, surprise, and inspire you to discover your academic path at Yavapai College.
Laura Bloomenstein received her MFA in ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan in 1991 and her BFA in ceramics from Massachusetts College of Art in Boston in 1986. She also studied at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1987 - 1988. Laura exhibits her work nationally and her work is in personal collections across the country.
“I make art because it is one of the more sensitive ways for me to look at and become more aware of myself. In the creative process, I am drawn to the tactile qualities of material. I act upon those qualities - amass, coordinate, connect, fold… – and the result is prospective art. I work with clay and glaze, paper, and a variety of other materials.”
Lauren McCrea
Professor, Graphic Design and Visual Arts Chair
Lauren McCrea received her MA in Education from the University of Wyoming in 2011 and her BA in Visual and Graphic Arts from the University of Northern Colorado in 1998. She is an Arizona based graphic designer that makes it a priority to blend her role as both educator and working artist. Growing up on a Norwegian family farm, attending country school, and tromping the plains of the Dakotas shaped her love for nature, tradition, and culture. Picking Juneberries, spending
summer evenings in the garden, and getting lost in the open night skies are other childhood memories that Lauren draws inspiration from.
Bryan Robertson
Associate Professor and
Program Director of 2D Visual Arts
Bryan Robertson received an MFA in painting and drawing from the University of Washington in 2016 and his BFA from the University of Missouri - St. Louis in 2012. “I work in paint and pixels. In the digital age, images have become poor, where once they were aggrandized and rare now they are plentiful and unavoidable. Collage and the blending of already existing imagery focus reality back upon itself, today, any visual I can think of already exists, and I have never run into a situation where I couldn’t find the exact image I want using Internet sources, quite often finding surprising new ones. Because of this, my work starts as digital drawings and montages; it is through the translation into paintings that these images obtain a physicality able to synthesize diverse sources of information into a single pictorial space.”
Kris Waid-Jones received his MFA in Art from Arizona State University in 2011 and a BA in Music from Whitworth University in 1985. Kris is uniquely able to inspire fine art among his students as a result of his own life experience. A musician, performer and music instructor for the first half of his career, he discovered his visual art talent while helping with set design and props for musical theater productions at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. He shares his visual arts gifts one-on-one with his students at Yavapai College, where he teaches welded metal sculpture, advanced welded metal, and 3-D design. “Quite honestly, it is gratifying when you see someone get it - when they finally understand what this is all about…when they understand that this is about communication.”