Each year, the Henry presents the University of Washington's School of Art + Art History + Design Master of Fine Arts and Master of Design Thesis Exhibition. Throughout their programs, fine arts and design students work with advisers and other artists to develop advanced techniques, expand concepts, discuss critical issues, and emerge with a vision and direction for their own work.
The 2025 University of Washington MFA + MDes Thesis Exhibition is organized by Trevor Goosen, Fabricator and Preparator, and Jackson Irvine, Exhibition Tech.
Exhibitions at the Henry are made possible through the generous support of our annual sponsors, 4Culture and ArtsFund.
ARTISTS
Lisa K. Bambach
Master of Design
Lisa K. Bambach is an award-winning designer, strategist, and educator from Cincinnati, Ohio, who aspires to foster collaborative environments that promote discourse and build relationships. She has spoken about her approaches to creating memorable experiences through experiential design at DAAPx Symposium and the GSA Annual Conference and was a recipient of the ONEder Grant from One Workplace in 2023, which enabled her to explore the wellness impact of working outdoors. Lisa’s work has also been exhibited at in:sight: A showcase of excellence in strategy and creative risk, Brandemodium, and the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
Lisa has studied at the University of Cincinnati, Basel School of Design, and University of Washington. She has been a design educator for over 15 years, working with young designers in both the secondary and collegiate levels who are being introduced to design methodology, technology, systems thinking, and professional practices. She has particular interest in harnessing the emotive qualities of social design to teach the fundamentals of design methodology.
Lisa K. Bambach, Ambiguous Declarations, 2024, Dichroic Vinyl on Cast Acrylic with Wooden Base, 5" × 5.75" × 6". Photo courtesy of the artist.
ABOVE
Lisa K. Bambach, Relics of Communal Memory, 2024, Mixed Media, 9" × 9" × 9". Photo courtesy of the artist.
LEFT
Lisa K. Bambach, Transfer, 2023, Publication, 12" × 18".
Photo courtesy of the artist.
ABOVE
Lisa K. Bambach, Ecotonal Office, 2024, Research
Publication, 13.375" × 7.5". Photo courtesy of the artist.
Bonny Barker
Master of Fine Art
Bonny Barker is an artist based in Seattle, Washington. Barker received an AA from San Joaquin Delta College and a BFA from San Jose State University. She is currently an MFA candidate at University of Washington. Working primarily through ceramics, her practice directly relates process to establishing a state of wellbeing. Serving as a record of navigating hostile mental and physical spaces, her work reflects on the relationships and patterns of behavior found within. Investigating her body’s own response to toxic and restrictive environments, and that of those around her, has led to an interest in our collective animalistic tendencies.
Intertwining and impeding one another, the animal forms within Barker’s sculptures embody the dance of emotional entanglement and habitual behaviors established within interpersonal relations. Capturing interactions between creatures of flight, her handbuilt structures of clay are cemented to their foundation, warning of the danger and consequence of unhealthy connections. Through these compositions Barker makes recognizable our own patterns and capabilities to either nurture or destroy, prompting consideration of the relationships we all foster.
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Bonny Barker, Strained, 2024, Ceramic, low fire glaze. 18" × 14" × 14". Photo courtesy of the artist.
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Bonny Barker, Crash Landing, 2025, Soda fired ceramic, concrete. 30" × 18" × 4". Photo courtesy of the artist .
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Bonny Barker, Toxic Reactivity, 2024, Ceramic, low fire glaze, sand. 42" × 40" × 42". Photo courtesy of the artist.
Ian Brownlee
Master of Fine Art
Ian is a painter and muralist based in Seattle. Originally from the southeastern U.S, he attended California College of the Arts and received a BFA from Atlanta College of Art. He has painted largescale murals across the United States, many of which involved community collaboration. He has taught art at the Penland School of Craft, Arrowmont, the John Campbell Folk School, and the University of Washington. When he’s not painting, he’s exploring the high peaks of the Cascades or swimming in a mountain lake.
Ian’s narrative paintings mix autobiography with fiction. They use humor and mythological storytelling to depict states of mind, addressing subjects fraught with ambivalence. Unusual combinations of images depict conflicting feelings; colors evoke a sense of wonder. Above all, Ian hopes that a feeling will come through even though the story might not make literal sense. Some of the themes addressed include the connection between mental health and environmental health and the necessity of mourning.
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Ian Brownlee, Dream a Little Dream, 2025, oil and acrylic on canvas, 60" × 72". Photo courtesy of the artist.
LEFT
ABOVE
Ian Brownlee, Burning Up, 2024, oil on paper on panel, 11" × 9".
Photo courtesy of the artist.
Ian Brownlee, Dad’s Funeral, 2025, oil and acrylic on canvas, 60" × 72". Photo courtesy of the artist.
Maryam Dehbozorgi
Master of Fine Art
Maryam Dehbozorgi is an interdisciplinary artist originally from Iran, currently living and working in the United States. She holds a BA in Graphic Design (2011) and an MA in Painting (2023) from Soore University in Tehran, Iran. Her artistic journey began in 2014 in Shiraz, Iran where she studied under renowned artist Mohsen Zare. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Photo/Media at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she has deepened her engagement with photography and visual media.
Her practice spans collage, photography, painting, installation, assemblage, and digital art. Through these mediums, she explores dualities such as memory and reality, past and present, self and other, presence and absence. Initially focused on self and identity, she began using photographs as raw material to reconnect with a fading past—reconstructing and reinterpreting it through visual language. This process has expanded to include Persian carpets as carriers of cultural memory, allowing her to reestablish ties to her homeland after migration.
Maryam’s work is rooted in lived experience and reflects themes of identity, displacement, belonging, and memory. Using familiar materials, she creates layered, conceptual spaces disrupted by voids—inviting viewers to uncover hidden narratives that mirror her journey through memory and identity.
Her work has been exhibited across the U.S., France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, and Iran, including at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery, Spatial Gallery, TO FEEL Gallery, The Incorrigible Drawing Club, and more. She received the Gonzales Graduate Scholarship and the Top Scholar Award from the University of Washington.
LEFT Maryam Dehbozorgi, Khorasan Carpet, 2024, video Art. Photo courtesy of the artist.
LEFT
Maryam Dehbozorgi, My Home, 2024, Cardboard, Stone, Digital Print, 90cm x 62 cm. Photo courtesy of the artist.
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Maryam Dehbozorgi, My Dream, 2024, Cardboard, Bubbles, Digital Print, 90cm x 62 cm. Photo courtesy of the artist.
ABOVE, RIGHT
Maryam Dehbozorgi, Untitled, 2024, Cardboard, Bubbles, Stone, Digital Print, 52cm x 50cm. Photo courtesy of the artist.
LEFT
Jordan Horton, Metamorphosis, 2025, Oil on canvas, 70" × 59".
Photo courtesy of the artist.
Jordan Horton, Shower Epiphany, 2024, Oil on canvas, 70" × 59". Photo courtesy of the artist.
RIGHT
Jordan Horton
Master of Fine Art
Jordan Horton is an artist currently living in Seattle, WA. His work focuses on how objects, spaces, and moments of exchange are seen, felt, and experienced before naming. He makes paintings and drawings that place the viewer on the edge of legibility and therefore on the edge of understanding or meaning. The instability found in the images he constructs is reflective of both philosophical concerns of locating consciousness and the cultural challenge of confidently holding belief, especially in the posttruth era where authority is subjective.
Horton graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2021 with a BFA and will receive his MFA from the University of Washington. His work has been shown in Chicago, Kansas City, Seattle, and Singapore.
ABOVE
Jordan Horton, All is Spirit, 2024, Oil on canvas, 18" × 24".
Photo courtesy of the artist.
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Jordan Horton, Shapeshifting, 2024, Oil on canvas, 42" × 48".
Photo courtesy of the artist.
Jade Knox
Master of Fine Art
Jade Knox’s ceramic sculptures inhabit a dynamic space shaped by time, narrative, and the presence of the viewer. Initially working in small, cramped conditions during the pandemic, Knox entered graduate school seeking room for both her practice and herself to expand. What began as a shift in scale became a deeper transformation. Influenced by the theory of the observer effect, Knox’s work explores the idea that observation itself alters perception. Her sculptures exist not as static objects, but as evolving artifacts shaped by interaction — conjuring echoes of ancient relics and visions of speculative futures.
A turning point came early in her time at UW, when a faculty critique introduced the idea of “world-building.” This framework expanded her thinking, moving her away from object-making toward immersive storytelling. Research into the marine life of the PNW and the industrial forms of Seattle led her to incorporate organic forms, modular systems, and hierarchies into her ceramics. The influence of place — both her rural Tennessee upbringing and her current urban surroundings — sparked a desire to weave personal narrative into her work.
Each sculpture emerges as a collision of reflection and projection, blending nostalgia with possibility. Viewers play a vital role: just as quantum particles shift under observation, Knox’s pieces reveal new meanings with every gaze. Her time at UW has deepened her inquiry into how stories are constructed through culture, environment, and interaction. In this evolving practice, ceramics become more than material — they become portals, shaped by time, memory, and the transformative power of attention.
LEFT
Jade Knox, Skitter Scatter, 2024, Ceramic/plaster/oil paint/salt, 44" × 42" × 48". Photo courtesy of the artist.
Also shown ABOVE, LEFT
Jade Knox, Sentinel, 2024, oil on canvas. Photo courtesy of the artist.
ABOVE, RIGHT
Jade Knox, Artemesion, 2024, oil on canvas. Photo courtesy of the artist.
ABOVE
Jade Knox, Forunafax tenuis, 2024, Glazed ceramic/tape/salt, 52" × 32" × 32". Photo courtesy of the artist.
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Jade Knox, Infestation, 2024, shipping tubes/ mulch, site specific installation (Silver Shed). Photo courtesy of Stephanie Alacon.
ABOVE
Kyler Pahang, Eyes Down 2025, Oil on Canvas Wood Panel.
Photo courtesy of the artist.
Kyler Pahang
Master of Fine Art
Kyler Pahang is a Filipino artist based on Duwamish Land. His art is focused on empowering, decolonizing, and celebrating cultures. He is exploring the care that is shared between men in the settings of the Barbershop and the Gym. Pahang has a BA with Honors from the University of Washington and will be getting his MFA from UW. During his undergraduate studies, he was a Mary Gates Scholar and received the Hubs Directory Award from his department.
Pahang creates representational and figurative paintings that emanate from ethnographic practices and focus on interpersonal relationships. He wants to reconnect with his roots by creating artworks that are based on Filipinx art and traditions. His art employs multiple processes and artistic choices that cohere with his desire to represent the people he shares his culture with.
Pahang deploys high-key color pallets to signal contradictions between the feelings and observations he paints, such as the contradictions between hypermasculinity and intimacy among men in his artwork on barbershops. He makes paintings that bring to light the contradictions of gender performance in very gendered spaces, like men in the barbershop physically touching each other in defiance of heteronormative expectations. He applies thin passes of paint to create an ethereal, almost ghostlike depiction of the people he paints because, in these spaces, he does not reveal their full selves. Rather he paints a fragmented version of themselves.
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Kyler Pahang, The Guidline, 2025, Oil on Canvas Wood Panel. Photo courtesy of the artist.
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Kyler Pahang, Hair Cascade, 2025, Oil on Canvas Wood Panel. Photo courtesy of the artist.
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Kyler Pahang, Clean Shaven, 2025, Oil on Canvas Wood Panel. Photo courtesy of the artist.
ralph salazar
Master of Fine Art
ralph salazar is a visual artist and actress currently based in Seattle, WA. salazar creates assemblage sculptures and kinetic installations out of video, performance, sound, and found material. With a visual language conflicted between comfort and urgency salazar investigates anxieties stemming from systemic failure. She unearths the hidden narratives of found materials that evoke notions of home, climate crisis, and the burden of labor under capitalism.
salazar holds a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and is set to complete her MFA at the University of Washington, Seattle, in spring 2025. Her work has been exhibited and screened nationally and internationally and she was selected for Best Actress, Short Film at the Queens World Film Festival, NY.
BELOW
ralph salazar, Continuous home repair, 2024, work light, cement mixer, sand, water, Capiz, extension cables, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of the artist.
ABOVE
ralph salazar, my island body, 2024, vinyl window, sandbags, emergency blanket, air mover, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of the artist.
BELOW
ralph salazar, trying to care, 2024, video, projection, sound, blue pallet, dimensions variable.
Photo courtesy of the artist.
Yihan Shi, Memory Hourglass, 2024, Sandbox, White Sand and Archival Inkjet Print, 11" × 4". Photo courtesy of the artist.
Yihan Shi
Master of Fine Art
Yihan digitally manipulates her family’s photographic archive to reveal suppressed memories of cultural expectations. Her work addresses the fragmentation of identity shaped by familial intimacy, social norms, and the invisible pressures embedded in the process of growing up.
Using tools like the healing brush, AI removal, and untraditional darkroom printing processes, she intentionally obscures or erases the human figures — often herself and relatives — from each photograph, reconstructing the domestic space based on memory. These acts of removal are not erasures but excavations, revealing the tension between personal history and imposed narratives. The resulting images, quiet and incomplete, carry the weight of what has been expected, repressed, or forgotten.
Her motivation stems from the emotional confusion tied to growing up under constant attention — where love is mixed with pressure, and care often feels like control. Influenced by her own experience navigating family dynamics shaped by tradition and unspoken rules, these images become a means of processing how those expectations shape identity, and what parts of the self are hidden or abandoned in response.
Ultimately, she aims to create spaces where viewers can confront their own unresolved inheritances. By removing the visible, she invites attention to the unseen: the structures that shape us before we can name them, and the loss that follows when we try to escape them.
BELOW
Yihan Shi, Water Moon, 2024, Multiple Silver Gelatin Prints, 4" × 5". Photo courtesy of the artist.
ABOVE
Yihan Shi, Unphotographed Past, 2024, Archival Inkjet Prints, 24" × 18". Photo courtesy of the artist.
