Schuh Visiting Artist provides transformative experience for UW-Whitewater students
April 16, 2025
Written by Lalaina Chandanais | Photos by Craig Schreiner
Art is the physical representation of how we navigate the world around us, as well as a way that we can explore how our identities interact. This is a theme held in great importance by Cristina Córdova, the 2025 Schuh Visiting Artist at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
“I grew up in the heart of the Caribbean, where both beauty and chaos exist, so resilience is a necessity,” Córdova said during the presentation she gave outside UW-Whitewater’s Crossman Gallery on March 13.
She explained that her Puerto Rican culture is a prominent artistic influence that not only shines through her work, but is a large part of her art’s foundation itself. Since her work often centers around the social ideas of identity and culture, Córdova emphasizes the influence of collaborative work in the art world.
Córdova’s exhibition — “Embodied Connections: Figurative Ceramics and Cultural Narratives” — and her visit to the Whitewater campus were funded by the Annette and Dale Schuh Visiting Artist Endowment, which supports an annual visit of a visual artist of a significant stature to UW-Whitewater. Córdova’s work was on display from February 17 through March 20.
Annette and Dale Schuh, center, view student art in Crossman Gallery on March 13, 2025. Cristina Córdova, a sculptor from North Carolina, was the 2025 Annette and Dale Schuh Visiting Artist.
Students in UW-Whitewater’s College of Arts and Communication have benefitted from the endowment and the artists it brings to campus for nearly a decade. It was established in 2015 in honor of Annette Schuh’s transformative experience as an undergraduate art student at UW-Whitewater interacting with notable visiting artists.
Heather Smith, front, an art education student, holds her cell phone so that sculptor Cristina Córdova, shown on the monitor in back, can see Smith's work in progress on Feb. 26, 2025. Córdova, a sculptor from North Carolina, was teaching and consulting remotely with students before traveling to Wisconsin for her exhibition in Crossman Gallery and to work directly with students, whose work was also shown. Córdova is the 2025 Annette and Dale Schuh Visiting Artist.
Cordova began conducting collaborative ceramics workshops for the university’s art and design students at the beginning of the spring 2025 semester, leading virtual ceramics workshops from her home in North Carolina. She would meet with each student one-on-one to discuss their individual projects and the stages of their creative processes, giving them personalized feedback on their pieces as they worked on them.
Jessica Lacki, a senior art major from Wales, was one of nine art students who worked closely with Córdova during the eight-week ceramics course.
“She’s an amazing teacher. She can make sculpting look so easy,” Lacki said. “She answers our questions in a way that makes sense, and she’s a person you can easily connect with.”
When asked about the in-person portion of the course, Lacki begins to describe the unique ways that Córdova’s instruction led to the class’ final collaborative piece.
“We dimmed the lights, sat in a circle on a tarp, and were given blocks of clay. We did some breathing exercises and got into this really intense head space,” Lacki says. “She asked us to sculpt something with our eyes closed — to sculpt what we felt.”
Art major Jessica Lacki, from Wales, exhibits her sculpture in Crossman Gallery on March 13, 2025. Cristina Córdova, the 2025 Annette and Dale Schuh Visiting Artist, worked remotely with students like Lacki before coming to campus for the exhibition at Crossman Gallery in March.
Lacki said the exercise allowed students to feel a sort of intimacy with the material as they channeled their emotions and instincts into the clay, which would become their own unique, unfired contributions to the large collaborative piece. A grand collection of the students’ work that came out of this meditative exercise lined the walls of the Crossman Gallery for the duration of Córdova’s time on campus, displaying what the artist proudly referred to as “an interesting map of [their] shared experience.”
Córdova’s visit let the students explore the bounds of their mediums and produce pieces they would have previously never thought to make. Her openness about her career journey as an artist and her creative methods — which included her use of combining organic and inorganic materials such as hair and wire to explore “the space between reason and instinct” — gave the students a new perspective on their own career opportunities.
“It doesn’t feel like there are a lot of career options for the arts other than education, so having actual working artists come in and speak helps us see other options,” says Lacki. “It can feel daunting, and so it is nice just having someone here to sit down and talk to. I feel very thankful.”
Cristina Córdova, a visiting artist in the Annette and Dale Schuh-endowed program in the Department of Art and Design, demonstrates her clay sculpting technique for students in the ceramics studio in Greenhill Center of the Arts on March 12, 2025.
When Córdova’s visit to the campus came to an end, she left a resonating dialogue on topics of culture and representation in her wake. Lacki recognizes the great impact that the themes of Córdova’s art have, and finds her own inspiration from the topics she explores.
“Originally, I was drawn to her work because of the figure, the way that she uses the body to express strong, powerful messages,” says Lacki in reflection. “As I got to know her, I became more connected to her concepts of identity and culture, and I felt an even deeper connection with it all.”
