Advanced Mentored Studies
A vital link in the education of emerging artists.
Within the Advanced Mentored Studies program, students gain access to master faculty—top contemporary artists and educators—over a three-year period, providing rigorous inquiry and steady direction for their individual practice. Students gain the critical levels of knowledge and mentorship necessary to take the next, important steps of becoming serious contributors in their chosen fields.
Anderson Ranch offers Advanced Mentored Studies in the fields of Photography, Painting and Drawing, Sculpture, Digital Fabrication and Ceramics.
The programs, which include studio work, critical dialog and critique, offer artists the opportunity to expand the scope of their current practice as well as their ability to develop a critical eye regarding their work. In addition to weeklong or two-week workshops each year, participants engage in mid-year portfolio reviews as well as quarterly meetings with faculty to discuss their ongoing work and progress. At mid-year, the faculty conduct an online critique with the entire group.
Advanced Mentored Studies Faculty
Ebitenyefa Baralaye
Ebitenyefa Baralaye is a ceramicist, sculptor, and educator. His work explores objects, text, bodies, and patterns abstracted through a diaspora lens and the aesthetics of craft. Baralaye’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. He is currently an assistant professor in Ceramics at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, MI.
James Estrin
James Estrin is a staff photographer for The New York Times. He is a founder of Lens, The New York Times’s photography blog, and has been its co-editor since it launched in 2009. He has worked for The New York Times since 1992 and was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team in 2001. James is a co-producer of the HBO film “Under Fire: The Untold Story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro”.
Del Harrow
Del Harrow lives and works in Fort Collins, CO, with his wife, potter Sanam Emami, and their son, William. He is a Colorado State University professor teaching sculpture, digital fabrication, and ceramics. His work is in the permanent collections of the Arizona State University Art Museum, The US State Department Art in Embassies Collection, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Holly Hughes
Holly Hughes is a frequent Ranch faculty member and professor emeritus of painting at Rhode Island School of Design. Having exhibited nationally and internationally, Hughes’s painting has been greatly influenced by both ceramic and printmaking practice and research. She loves “Salon Style” installations—the mixing of these genres on the wall—such as her BLAZON created for the Dorsky Museum. Her most recent exhibit was “Salad Days” at Pamela Salisbury Gallery in 2024.
Ed Kashi
Ed Kashi is a prolific photojournalist, filmmaker, speaker and educator. A member of VII Photo Agency, Kashi has produced 14 books, and his work has been published and exhibited worldwide.
Stephen Westfall
Stephen Westfall received his MFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work was represented by Lennon, Weinberg in New York from 1997 to 2019. He is currently represented in New York by Alexandre Gallery. He has had 50 solo exhibitions in the United States and Europe. Westfall’s are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the Metropolitan Museum in New York; the Kemper Museum in Kansas City; the Louisiana Museum in Humleback, Denmark; the Munson Williams Proctor Museum in Utica; New York, the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Albertina Museum in Vienna, Austria; the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; the Library of Congress; the Museum of Art and Architecture at UC Santa Barbara; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art; and the Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers University. Westfall’s own writing has been extensively published in such journals as Arts, Art in America, Flash Art, the Brooklyn Rail, and Bomb among others. He was for years a Contributing Editor to Art in America. He has also authored over a hundred gallery and museum catalog essays, most recently for octogenarian, Susan Fortgang’s critically acclaimed first solo exhibition at Eric Firestone Gallery. Westfall has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Nancy Graves Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He received a Rome Prize Fellowship and spent a year at the American Academy in Rome during 2009-2010. In 2024 he was given the Murray Reich Distinguished Artist Award by the New York Foundation for the Arts. He has been given the title, Professor Emeritus at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, where he was Graduate Director from 2010 to 2015, and Undergraduate Director from 2020 to 2021; and a former lecturer and Painting Chair at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College, where he taught for 32 years. He has held Distinguished Chairs at Colgate University in 1999 and Princeton University in 2005.
Participants
Who Participates in Advanced Mentored Studies?
Anderson Ranch Arts Center’s Advanced Mentored Studies program is designed for emerging and established artists who are ready to take their artistic practice to the next level. Participants are serious, committed artists with an established body of work who seek advanced art education, sustained mentorship, and meaningful critical dialogue with leading contemporary artists and educators.
Artists participate in three-year programs in Photography, Painting and Drawing, Sculpture, and Ceramics, developing their individual practices through studio work, portfolio reviews, critiques, and ongoing faculty mentorship. The program provides the time, community, and guidance necessary to build the skills and critical thinking for continued growth as professional artists.
“The program was essential to completing my long-term documentary project. It can be difficult working on your own, especially when your work is emotionally challenging. Having my classmates talk through the difficulties I faced helped me in more ways than I can count. I so value the people I met and the work I was able to produce through this program and know that it will continue to impact my work and career.”
-Lauren Justice, Graduate of the Advanced Mentored Studies program
Participant Awards and Recognition
Participant Awards
Advanced Mentored Studies participants have received numerous prestigious awards for their work following their time in this marquee program at Anderson Ranch. These world-renowned achievements include honors in the following:
- Amber Bracken: World Press Photo of the Year 2022
- Amber Bracken: World Press Photo 1st Place Contemporary Issues
- Rosem Morton: Leica Women Foto Project Award Winner, 2022
- September Bottoms: Leica Women Foto Project Award Winner, 2022
- Jackie Molloy: recipient of the VII Leica Women’s Mentorship, 2022
- Rebecca Kiger and Amr Alfiky featured in Time’s Top 100 Photos of 2021
- Salwan Georges:
- Photographer of the Year, Pictures of the Year International, 2021
- Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism, winner, 2020
- Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, finalist, 2020
- Gerald Loeb Award for International Business Reporting, finalist, 2020
- WHNPA, Picture Feature Story, winner, 2019 & 2020
- Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism, finalist, 2019
- PDN’s 30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch, 2017
- Michigan’s Emmy Award, winner, 2017
- Michigan’s Press Photographers Association Multimedia Photographer of the Year, 2016
- Amr Alfiky and September Bottoms: NY Times Photography Fellowship recipients, 2020
- Maria Contreras Coll: National Geographic Explorer grantee, 2020
- Sebastian Hidalgo: National Geographic Explorer grantee, 2019
- Arati Kumar-Rao: National Geographic Explorer grantee, 2019
- Yu Yu Myint Than and Elias Williams: Magnum Foundation Photography and Human Rights Fellowship, 2017