Low residency.
High impact.
Join a creative community committed to your success as a 21st century artist.
The Clark Low-Residency MFA
- Two-year/four-semester program (16 units)
- June or January start
- Supervised work during semesters with remote faculty advisors and studio mentors local to your area
- Five residencies, with thesis work presented during final residency and January exhibition at MASS MoCA
Residencies and Exhibitions
These intensive 10-day sessions provide an immersive environment for artist-scholars, with regular critiques, guest faculty, and curated seminars on topics such as critical theory, art history, aesthetics, and professional practice.
The program concludes with a fifth, thesis residency where you will defend your written thesis and present a professional artist talk. All graduates are included in an exhibition catalog and participate in a January thesis show at MASS MoCA.
January and June Program Starts:
Clark University
Worcester, Massachusetts
MASS MoCA
North Adams, Massachusetts
Learn from passionate practitioners
At the heart of your MFA experience at Clark are faculty practitioners who are committed to nurturing your artistic growth and expression while pursuing their own. They are painters, sculptors, filmmakers, art critics, historians, curators, photographers, and interactive artists. Each provides engaging and supportive instruction and guidance, drawing from their own academic and professional backgrounds.
Your residency experience includes exposure to renowned national and international artists, curators, and art professionals.
Meet our engaged faculty
Toby Sisson
Clark Associated Faculty
Toby Sisson earned her B.F.A, Magna Cum Laude, from the College of Visual Arts in Saint Paul, Minnesota and her M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
Learn more
Her areas of specialization include drawing, painting and printmaking, as well as community-based research, service learning, and curatorial projects.
Ben Sloat
Program Director
Ben earned a BA from UC Berkeley and an MFA from Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. His work has been exhibited at the 13th Havana Biennial, Matanzas, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, MFA, Boston, Queens Museum, Dublin City Gallery/The Hugh Lane, and the Peabody-Essex Museum.
Learn more
His solo exhibitions include those at Galerie Laroche/Joncas in Montreal, ACC Gallery in Taipei, Steven Zevitas Gallery in Boston, Coop Gallery in Nashville, Front Gallery in Oakland, and Gallery 126 in Galway. In 2009, he was a Fulbright Faculty Scholar to Taiwan.
Soren Sorensen
Program Director
Soren Sorensen holds an M.F.A. in Film from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Sorensen teaches the bulk of the Screen Studies program’s production offerings including advanced courses in documentary and short narrative filmmaking.
Ulm
Clark Associated Faculty
Ulm has been an emergent media artist, game developer, and professor of interactive media for over 15 years.
Learn more
Ulm received their MFA from Lesley University and maintains a studio at a local maker-space [and in the cloud], believing that practice and purpose intersect at the community level.
Oliver Wasow
Residency Faculty
Oliver Wasow is a fine art photographer living and working in Rhinebeck, NY. He received his BA from Hunter College and his Master’s Degree from the Transart Institute in Austria.
Learn more
His work is currently represented by Theodore: Art Gallery in NYC. Wasow has had a number of one person exhibitions, including shows at Theodore: Art, Josh Baer Gallery, Janet Borden Gallery, Tom Solomon Gallery in Los Angeles, The South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art in North Carolina, and the Hilliard Museum in Lafayette, LA. His work has been included in numerous national and international group shows, including such benchmark exhibitions as ‘Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop,’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ‘Image World,’ at the Whitney Museum of Art in NYC, and ‘The Photography of Invention,’ at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
His photographs are included in a number of private collections and are represented in various prominent public collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, The Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC, and The Milwaukee Art Museum.
Deb Todd Wheeler
Residency Faculty
Deb Todd Wheeler is an award winning multi-disciplinary artist in the Boston area who creates emergent spaces of radical generosity for emotional transformation and reclamation.
Learn more
In her most recent project, she guides participants through a geo-located audio-walk in the partially remediated landscape of Lost Pond, which you can read about in her recently released Book of Walks. She generates intimate experiences through interactive installations, objects, and participatory happenings, creating provisional communities through gathering, grief work, and holding commemorative space. Her expertise is wide ranging, encompassing the construction of images, objects, and experiences.
She is a Deep Listening facilitator, a founding member of the LENNYcollective, and is represented by Ellen Miller Gallery.
Jan Avgikos
Residency Faculty
Jan Avgikos is an art critic and historian who is based in New York and the Hudson Valley—where she works and lives. She is a recipient of CAA’s Frank Jewett Mather award for distinction in art criticism and was a graduate Mellon Fellow in art history at Columbia University.
Learn more
She is currently a contributing editor with Artforum International, where she has enjoyed a long-standing affiliation, and regularly publishes reviews. Her writing about modern and contemporary art spans over 30 years and has been published in numerous museum and gallery catalogues, as well as magazines that include Frieze, Flash, Parkett, Brooklyn Rail, and others. Upcoming publications include essays on Dorothea Rockburne and Michelle Grabner. In addition, Ms. Avgikos is currently involved in research for a book on a core group of women artists affiliated with the Woodstock art colony and active in NYC art scenes from the ’20 through the ‘70s.
Ms. Avgikos teaches at the School for Visual Arts in the MFA photo program and the Visual and Cultural Studies program where she focuses on various histories of modern and contemporary art, as well as globalization and the arts. She also teaches in NYU’s MFA program where she guides students in their thesis exhibition.
For fun, Ms. Avgikos cultivates extensive gardens and engages in historic house renovation.
Luis Croquer
Residency Faculty
Luis Croquer is a Boston-based curator and arts professional. He has curated solo exhibitions featuring the work of Paul McCarthy, Katinka Bock, Haegue Yang, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Edgar Arceneaux, and the first survey in the United States of Franz Erhard Walther’s work, among others.
Learn more
He was the Henry and Lois Foster director and chief curator of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, and previously served as deputy director at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle, and as director and chief curator at MOCA Detroit. He has also held museum positions in New York, and his native El Salvador.
Deborah Davidson
Residency Faculty
Deborah Davidson is an artist, curator and educator. She received her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University and BA from Binghamton University. She is founder and director of Catalyst Conversations, devoted to the dialogue between art and science.
Learn more
She also maintains a studio practice, and is the director and curator at the Suffolk University Gallery. Her work is in many private and public collections, including Yale University, Wellesley College, Boston Public Library, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Deborah has had solo exhibitions at the Danforth Museum of Art, Kingston Gallery, Oresman Gallery, Smith College and Nesto Gallery, Milton Academy. Awards include Humanities Center Artist in Residence, Northeastern University, Finalist, Brother Thomas Fellowship and a Berkshire Taconic A.R.T. grant. She is featured on the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s podcast Creative Minds Outloud. Deborah will have a solo exhibit at the Carole Calo Gallery, Stonehill College in fall 2024.
Stephen DiRado
Clark Associated Faculty
Stephen DiRado is a professor in the Visual and Performing Arts Department, Clark University. He is a photographer and filmmaker whose art is primarily inspired by his captivation and admiration for the people in his community.
Learn more
His scrupulously skilled photographs portray the underlying intimacy of individuals and the interactions within group dynamics. His films are narratives and commentaries about the people in his life.
Alex Jackson
Residency Faculty
Alex Jackson currently lives and works in the greater Philadelphia area. He received his BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2015 and received his MFA from Yale University in 2017.
Learn more
He has attended residencies at Yale Norfolk, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and Yaddo. Recent exhibitions include Chrysalis at Jenkins Johnson Projects (Brooklyn, NY 2021), and Earthgrazer at Steven Zevitas Gallery (Boston, MA 2023). His work can be found in public collections at The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Santa Barbara Art Museum, and the DeYoung Museum.
Rebecca Joy
Assistant Program Director
An arts administrator with a background in editorial, Rebecca earned her BA from Brandeis University and her Creative Writing MFA from Lesley University. In previous roles, she interned at Esquire magazine, and covered arts & dining for hyperlocal publications.
Peter Rostovsky
Residency Faculty
Peter Rostovsky is a Russian-born artist and writer who emigrated from the former Soviet Union as a political refugee in 1980. He works in a variety of disciplines that include painting, sculpture, installation, digital art, and graphic narrative.
Learn more
His many projects attempt to bridge the gap between painting and conceptual art and notions of high and low while frequently merging analog and digital approaches. His fine art has been shown widely both in the United States and abroad and has been exhibited at such venues as The Walker Art Center, MCA Santa Barbara, PS1/MOMA, Artpace, The Santa Monica Museum of Art, The ICA Philadelphia, the Blanton Museum of Art, S.M.A.K., and a host of private galleries. His writing and art criticism, under the pen name David Geers, has appeared in October, Fillip, Bomb, The Third Rail Quarterly, The Brooklyn Rail, and Frieze and often focuses on the convergence of art, politics, and technology. Meanwhile, his illustrated fiction and comics-based work has appeared in the Third Rail Quarterly, Unbag, Topic, in Devil’s Due’s much publicized Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Freshman Force and Talk Bernie to Me anthologies, as well as the Ringo Award-nominated Pandemix anthology. His recently released debut graphic novel, Damnation Diaries, received a 2023 MoCCA Award of Excellence, positive reviews in Publisher’s Weekly, Artforum and other venues and was listed by the New York Public Library as one of 2023’s Best Comics for Adults. Rostovsky currently teaches at New York University and Parsons New School.
Toby Sisson
Clark Associated Faculty
Toby Sisson earned her B.F.A, Magna Cum Laude, from the College of Visual Arts in Saint Paul, Minnesota and her M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
Learn more
Her areas of specialization include drawing, painting and printmaking, as well as community-based research, service learning, and curatorial projects.
Ben Sloat
Program Director
Ben earned a BA from UC Berkeley and an MFA from Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. His work has been exhibited at the 13th Havana Biennial, Matanzas, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, MFA, Boston, Queens Museum, Dublin City Gallery/The Hugh Lane, and the Peabody-Essex Museum.
Learn more
His solo exhibitions include those at Galerie Laroche/Joncas in Montreal, ACC Gallery in Taipei, Steven Zevitas Gallery in Boston, Coop Gallery in Nashville, Front Gallery in Oakland, and Gallery 126 in Galway. In 2009, he was a Fulbright Faculty Scholar to Taiwan.
Soren Sorensen
Program Director
Soren Sorensen holds an M.F.A. in Film from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Sorensen teaches the bulk of the Screen Studies program’s production offerings including advanced courses in documentary and short narrative filmmaking.
Ulm
Clark Associated Faculty
Ulm has been an emergent media artist, game developer, and professor of interactive media for over 15 years.
Learn more
Ulm received their MFA from Lesley University and maintains a studio at a local maker-space [and in the cloud], believing that practice and purpose intersect at the community level.
Oliver Wasow
Residency Faculty
Oliver Wasow is a fine art photographer living and working in Rhinebeck, NY. He received his BA from Hunter College and his Master’s Degree from the Transart Institute in Austria.
Learn more
His work is currently represented by Theodore: Art Gallery in NYC. Wasow has had a number of one person exhibitions, including shows at Theodore: Art, Josh Baer Gallery, Janet Borden Gallery, Tom Solomon Gallery in Los Angeles, The South Eastern Center for Contemporary Art in North Carolina, and the Hilliard Museum in Lafayette, LA. His work has been included in numerous national and international group shows, including such benchmark exhibitions as ‘Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop,’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, ‘Image World,’ at the Whitney Museum of Art in NYC, and ‘The Photography of Invention,’ at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
His photographs are included in a number of private collections and are represented in various prominent public collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, The Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC, and The Milwaukee Art Museum.
Deb Todd Wheeler
Residency Faculty
Deb Todd Wheeler is an award winning multi-disciplinary artist in the Boston area who creates emergent spaces of radical generosity for emotional transformation and reclamation.
Learn more
In her most recent project, she guides participants through a geo-located audio-walk in the partially remediated landscape of Lost Pond, which you can read about in her recently released Book of Walks. She generates intimate experiences through interactive installations, objects, and participatory happenings, creating provisional communities through gathering, grief work, and holding commemorative space. Her expertise is wide ranging, encompassing the construction of images, objects, and experiences.
She is a Deep Listening facilitator, a founding member of the LENNYcollective, and is represented by Ellen Miller Gallery.
Jan Avgikos
Residency Faculty
Jan Avgikos is an art critic and historian who is based in New York and the Hudson Valley—where she works and lives. She is a recipient of CAA’s Frank Jewett Mather award for distinction in art criticism and was a graduate Mellon Fellow in art history at Columbia University.
Learn more
She is currently a contributing editor with Artforum International, where she has enjoyed a long-standing affiliation, and regularly publishes reviews. Her writing about modern and contemporary art spans over 30 years and has been published in numerous museum and gallery catalogues, as well as magazines that include Frieze, Flash, Parkett, Brooklyn Rail, and others. Upcoming publications include essays on Dorothea Rockburne and Michelle Grabner. In addition, Ms. Avgikos is currently involved in research for a book on a core group of women artists affiliated with the Woodstock art colony and active in NYC art scenes from the ’20 through the ‘70s.
Ms. Avgikos teaches at the School for Visual Arts in the MFA photo program and the Visual and Cultural Studies program where she focuses on various histories of modern and contemporary art, as well as globalization and the arts. She also teaches in NYU’s MFA program where she guides students in their thesis exhibition.
For fun, Ms. Avgikos cultivates extensive gardens and engages in historic house renovation.
Luis Croquer
Residency Faculty
Luis Croquer is a Boston-based curator and arts professional. He has curated solo exhibitions featuring the work of Paul McCarthy, Katinka Bock, Haegue Yang, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Edgar Arceneaux, and the first survey in the United States of Franz Erhard Walther’s work, among others.
Learn more
He was the Henry and Lois Foster director and chief curator of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, and previously served as deputy director at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington in Seattle, and as director and chief curator at MOCA Detroit. He has also held museum positions in New York, and his native El Salvador.
Deborah Davidson
Residency Faculty
Deborah Davidson is an artist, curator and educator. She received her MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University and BA from Binghamton University. She is founder and director of Catalyst Conversations, devoted to the dialogue between art and science.
Learn more
She also maintains a studio practice, and is the director and curator at the Suffolk University Gallery. Her work is in many private and public collections, including Yale University, Wellesley College, Boston Public Library, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Deborah has had solo exhibitions at the Danforth Museum of Art, Kingston Gallery, Oresman Gallery, Smith College and Nesto Gallery, Milton Academy. Awards include Humanities Center Artist in Residence, Northeastern University, Finalist, Brother Thomas Fellowship and a Berkshire Taconic A.R.T. grant. She is featured on the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s podcast Creative Minds Outloud. Deborah will have a solo exhibit at the Carole Calo Gallery, Stonehill College in fall 2024.
Stephen DiRado
Clark Associated Faculty
Stephen DiRado is a professor in the Visual and Performing Arts Department, Clark University. He is a photographer and filmmaker whose art is primarily inspired by his captivation and admiration for the people in his community.
Learn more
His scrupulously skilled photographs portray the underlying intimacy of individuals and the interactions within group dynamics. His films are narratives and commentaries about the people in his life.
Alex Jackson
Residency Faculty
Alex Jackson currently lives and works in the greater Philadelphia area. He received his BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2015 and received his MFA from Yale University in 2017.
Learn more
He has attended residencies at Yale Norfolk, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and Yaddo. Recent exhibitions include Chrysalis at Jenkins Johnson Projects (Brooklyn, NY 2021), and Earthgrazer at Steven Zevitas Gallery (Boston, MA 2023). His work can be found in public collections at The Studio Museum in Harlem, the Santa Barbara Art Museum, and the DeYoung Museum.
Rebecca Joy
Assistant Program Director
An arts administrator with a background in editorial, Rebecca earned her BA from Brandeis University and her Creative Writing MFA from Lesley University. In previous roles, she interned at Esquire magazine, and covered arts & dining for hyperlocal publications.
Founded in 1887, our university brings together creative, passionate, and intellectually engaged students in a supportive community from around the world.
Clark’s Department of Visual and Performing Arts is home to undergraduate study of art history, media and culture, music, screen studies, studio art, and theater arts. The Becker School of Design and Technology offers globally ranked undergraduate and MFA programs in interactive media and game design.
On campus, the Traina Center for the Arts and numerous Stages, Galleries, and Spaces, and the recently completed Center for Media Arts, Computing, and Design create opportunities for collaboration across the University. And our Worcester campus location provides an inspiriting, supportive, and world-class arts community.
Admissions Requirements
- Completed Online application form
- Application fee (non-refundable): $75
- Your résumé
- Academic transcripts from all intuitions attended
- Demonstrated English language proficiency
- A personal statement
- A portfolio that includes 15-20 examples of your work. Portfolio can be across different projects and media, but should reflect a clear artistic vision.
Test Scores and Letters of Recommendation are NOT required for program admission.
Priority applications
June 2025 start – Applications reviewed in order received until May 1st, 2025
January 2026 start – Priority application deadline: October 1, 2025
Applications received after priority period will be considered in the order received.
Academic Excellence. Global Reach. Career Success.
Join our supportive community of scholars. Ready to take the next step?