Faculty Research
Faculty Research + Creative Practice
Our faculty are practicing artists, designers, researchers, technologists, and creative professionals whose work reaches far beyond the classroom.
We Teach What We Practice.
Research in the arts doesn't always look like a traditional laboratory. It can take the form of a public sculpture, an experimental game, a woodblock print, a new visual identity, an immersive historical world, a photographic series, or a community-based creative project. Xavier Art faculty bring active professional and scholarly practices into the studio, giving students the opportunity to learn alongside people who are continually making, questioning, experimenting, and contributing to their fields.
 |
Sculpture · Ceramics · Community Arts
Kelly PhelpsProfessor of Art
Kelly Phelps creates sculpture that examines the lives, labor, dignity, and experiences of working-class Americans. Working collaboratively with his identical twin brother, Kyle Phelps, he combines ceramics, sculpture, found materials, and highly detailed figurative imagery to tell stories about labor, race, industry, community, and American life. The Phelps brothers have exhibited extensively throughout the United States and internationally, completed numerous public and private commissions, and placed work in museum, corporate, and private collections. |
Public Sculpture + Stories of Everyday People
Phelps' recent public work continues his long-term investigation of working people and the communities often overlooked in traditional monuments. His practice asks who deserves to be represented in public space and how sculpture can preserve the experiences of ordinary lives.
|
Printmaking · Drawing · Art History
Katrina DiennoVisiting Professor of Art
Katrina Dienno is an artist and educator whose studio practice centers on large-scale woodblock prints and charcoal drawings. Her work draws from classical representations of women in mythology, folklore, and fairy tales while reconsidering how those stories construct identity, power, femininity, and cultural expectations. By combining traditional printmaking processes with monumental scale and contemporary interpretation, Dienno brings historic imagery into conversation with present-day experiences. |
 |
Reimagining Myth, Folklore + the Female Figure
Dienno's work uses the physicality of carving, printing, and drawing to revisit familiar cultural narratives. Her practice explores how historical representations continue to shape contemporary ways of seeing women and their stories.
 |
Graphic Design · Branding · Art Direction · Experiential Design
Sheridan DavenportAssistant Professor, Graphic Design
Sheridan Davenport's professional practice explores how visual identity moves beyond the page and becomes an experience. Her work spans branding, typography, environmental design, experiential art direction, set design, fabrication, and creative strategy. Davenport brings professional agency work directly into her teaching, connecting conceptual design thinking with the realities of audiences, clients, physical spaces, production, and collaborative creative teams. |
Branding Becomes an Experience
Projects such as Rooted Sessions combine brand identity, concept development, set design, fabrication, photography, video, and live experience. Davenport has also contributed design leadership to projects including the National Women's Soccer League Players Association rebrand and experiential activations for national brands.
|
3D Art · Game Design · Animation · Interactive Environments
Hagan MillerTeaching Professor, 3D Animation & Immersive Game Design
Hagan Miller works at the intersection of architecture, 3D art, animation, game design, and interactive technology. His practice investigates how spaces and environments can become playable, narrative, and immersive experiences. With a background in architecture, game design, physical computing, and entertainment technology, Miller approaches virtual environments as both designed spaces and interactive systems. |
 |
Building Worlds Through Design
Miller's interests include 3D modeling, environment creation, animation, interactive experiences, and games. While at Carnegie Mellon University, he contributed to multiple projects including Project Ecotopia, a national IEEE GameSIG finalist.
 |
AI · Design · Photography · Digital Humanities · Creative Technology
Jonathan GibsonChair + Professor of Art & Design
Jonathan Gibson's research moves between art, design, photography, artificial intelligence, education, identity, and digital humanities. His work asks how emerging technologies can create new ways to see, learn, remember, tell stories, and interact with the past. His practice ranges from painting and photography to experimental AI platforms, immersive historical experiences, educational games, family-history visualization, and interdisciplinary collaborations. |
Art Meets Artificial Intelligence
|
AI + Education
LivingHistory.AIAn experimental learning platform exploring how conversational AI can allow students to encounter historical figures, ask questions, develop curiosity, and learn history through dialogue. |
AI + Family History
TheAfterLife.AIA digital humanities project investigating how AI, immersive media, historical records, and storytelling can transform the way people encounter their own family history. |
AI + Jesuit History
The Spark, the Flame, and the EmberAn interdisciplinary digital project using AI and immersive storytelling to explore Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Pedro Arrupe, and the continuing evolution of Jesuit education. |
Research Happens in the Studio.
Across sculpture, printmaking, graphic design, animation, artificial intelligence, photography, immersive media, and community practice, Xavier Art faculty approach creative work as a form of inquiry.
That means students don't simply learn established techniques. They enter a community of artists and designers who are actively asking new questions, testing new processes, collaborating across disciplines, and creating work that contributes to the world beyond Xavier.