Department of Art and Design set to host 2026 Patricia Summerville Emerging Professionals Panel

 

MURRAY, Ky. — The Murray State University Department of Art and Design will host the Patricia Summerville Emerging Professionals Panel at 5 p.m. on April 9 in Price Doyle Fine Arts Building, room 623.

This year, three art and design alumni have been invited to campus to speak about their art careers and studio practice. Stoya Hastings, ‘09, an elementary art teacher in Murray, Kentucky; Rachel Mauser, ‘11, a multimedia artist working in Louisville, Kentucky; and Chris Schweizer, ‘04, a cartoonist and illustrator in Madisonville, Kentucky. 

Hastings earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) with teaching certification from Murray State in 2009 and has taught at Murray Elementary School since 2010. In her classroom, Hastings encourages creativity, experimentation, and confidence, helping young students see themselves as capable artists and creative thinkers. She is passionate about fostering a lifelong appreciation for the arts and is grateful to live and work in a community that actively supports arts education. Hastings and her family enjoy being part of the Murray community, where she values contributing to a school culture that celebrates creativity and artistic expression. 

Schweizer is a three-time Eisner Award-nominated cartoonist and Sunday Times bestselling illustrator. He received his BFA at Murray State where he studied English, Theater and Art, and his Master of Fine Arts from the Savannah College of Art and Design, where he later taught in both the Animation and Sequential Art (comics) departments until turning his full attention to publishing. He has been a visiting lecturer and instructor at a number of institutions including Denmark's Drawing Academy and the Animation Workshop in Viborg. His publishers and clients include Scholastic, Abrams/Amulet, First Second, Little, Brown, and Co, DC, Image, Dark Horse, Boom Studios, Oni Press, Netflix, Dreamworks, and Nickelodeon. He returned to Kentucky about 10 years ago and lives in Madisonville.

Mauser is co-founder and co-director of Steam Exchange Community Arts Center INC. where she is also in charge of Steam Exchange’s community and commercial screen printing shop. She is passionate about using the arts to empower and uplift young people, and spends most of her artistic energy teaching youth a variety of art including mural painting, sculpture, screen printing and bookbinding. Mauser holds a BFA in painting and art education from Murray State. She has taught paper making, printmaking, painting and bookbinding workshops in Louisville, North Carolina, Los Angeles, Mexico and Belize. She completed the two-year Core Fellowship at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina in 2014 and was a recipient of the Center for Craft Creativity and Design's Windgate Fellowship in 2011 and the Windgate Project Grant in 2016. Her work has been shown at national and international art venues, including the Penland School of Crafts and the Center for Craft Creativity and Design in North Carolina, Todd Art Gallery in Tennessee, and the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington.

The Patricia L. Summerville Lecture Series is an endowment to the Department of Art and Design. Summerville graduated from Murray State in 1972 with a Bachelor of Science in Education after attending for only three years. She then earned three additional degrees, including a Master of Science in Education with a major in supervision in 1976 from the University of Akron; a master’s in health administration with a major in hospital administration in 1982 from Xavier University; and a Juris Doctorate from Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University in 1994. She was admitted to the bar the following year. Summerville’s career included teaching art for six years, serving as an administrator for hospitals and healthcare facilities for 20 years and practicing law for five years before retiring in 2003.

All events are free and open to the public. For more information, contact the Department of Art and Design at 270-809-3784 or msu.art@murraystate.edu.