Meet the Crafties!
Current Crafties
Alma Rominger ’14
Maxim Kachalov ’14
Will Shira ’13
Meg Young ’14
Dayna Saffirstein SMFA ’13
Arcadia Hartung SMFA ’13
Felipe Ventura
tell it.
Austin Roush (Sunshine) ’13
Hallie Gluk ’14
Maximus Thaler ’13
Maximus runs the ceramics studio at the Crafts Center and is co-center manager. Any time not spent in Crafts House / Center is undoubtedly spent in the theatre. Theatre Engineering is a totally made up major but he makes it work anyway. Activities include theatre tech, pottery, rock climbing, hiking, kale, tofu, rice, meditating, dreaming and regarding electrons.
maximusthaler@gmail.com
Rachael Kadish ’14
Kelsey Schur’12
Combined Degree Program with SMFA: BFA in Studio Art, BA inn Music, Minor in English
Kelsey escaped to Tufts from a small town in Maine and is never going back! Besides being involved in the Crafts House community and activities, Kelsey works at the music library and as a freelance model. In the music department, she mainly focuses on composition and jazz flute performance, while at SMFA she spends most of her time on glass, photography, and sound. In her free time (rare as it is,) she rages at music festivals and shows, so she’s always ready with a beat-up tent, colorful costumes, and a hoard of glow sticks.
Recent Crafty Alums
Coorain Devin
Major: Philosophy and SMFA (Bachelor’s of Fine Arts/BFA, concentration in printmaking)
Year: 2012
Coorain is all about the baked goods, the movies, the art, and the pumpernickel bagels. He tries to make them all freely available to the general public (ask him for some- if he says he can’t, he’s lying). He’s got this penchant for old photographs, postcards, magazines and nice paper that can’t be satiated. He’s often sighted with a canister of iced tea (32 oz. daily) at the SMFA print shop, Tisch library, or Crafts House kitchen.
Jon Evans
Major: Electrical Engineering / Musical Instrument Engineering
Year: 2011
Hillary Fens
Major: Asian Studies/Japanese
Minor: Cognitive & Brain Science
Year: 2013
I like collaging and photographing and dressing up (frilly socks!) and black coffee and rice n beans and webdesign (maybe) and androgyny and Texas and William Faulkner and roadtrips…and I’m a pretty open person, too, if you can get me to start talking :).
Sanaa Hafeez
Major: Japanese / IR
Year: 2011
Gracie Myers Combined Degree ’12
Gracie’s power animal of the moment is a Ramkitty ( half fluffy cozy kitty, half going to bump into you while leaping ram.) She is a yellow rose of Texas (Austin!) and likes everyone to treat her like one! If you do she’ll bake you some gluten-free, vegan chocolate chip cookies, but if you don’t she will most likely stomp at you like a baby pygmy hippo (hey favorite animal BY THE WAY…its weirdly wet and playful, what’s not to love?) Anyway….down to business: Gracie is a combined degree with Tufts and SMFA, which means she does visual arts at one school and environmental studies at another. It also means her mascot is an Elefino ( elephant + rhino.) Screen-printing is her game, and merh is sometimes her name. If you want to find her… let out a kitty growl or any other animal yawp and she will leap out of the ether and either hug or slap you! Take Chances! Damn RamKittens!
Lissa Vanderbeck
Major: American Studies – Food Systems and Ecosystems
Year: 2012
Lissa is the resident bison of the house. She’s made up a food systems and ecosystems major within the American Studies department and mostly thinks about identifying the trees on campus, growing arugula, and the right here right now. She runs off to the ocean whenever possible and glories in dancing in the kitchen while making brownies. Can’t wait to get back to the farm.
Paul Vidich
Major: Engineering Science (Physics)
Year: Fall 2010
The slow life is the one for me. I like to make Andy Goldsworthy-esque nature sculptures around campus and in the world. I try not to go anywhere without a Boom-Box for company and can often be found halfway up a tree with the Boombox blasting below. If not in a tree I am likely to be in someones trash can meditating on the waste of our nation. Soon to become a well versed American Bum I have practiced the art of Hitch-hiking for a few years now and feel that the world is mine for the taking.
Adam Roy (co-op)
Year: 2012
Will Ramsdell
Major: Environmental Studies, Philosophy.
Minor: Multi-media Arts.
Year: 2011
I’m one of those Texas hippie cowboy philosopher types trying to live the revolution everyday. I love cooperative living and all the personal growth and fun it has brought me and my mates. I’m a raging Japanophile and an ethical hunter, an artist and a pirate. I will live in a Hobbit Hole and hope to see you there.
Gaia Weise ’13
Dual Degree
Karen Wickert
Major: Mechanical Engineering
Minor: Musical Instrument Engineering
Year: 2011
Enjoyment of creation embodies my life spirit – in pursuit of this, I create a slew of unrelated objects / ideas / abstractions in the in-between stages. I weave chainmail and scale mail, and am currently working on a dragon tail, a pair of scale bracers, a coif, and just finished a bag made of scales and rings. I work with wood, usually collaboratively, but am branching out this year and making a dulcimer to begin learning the skills of a luthier. I make jewelry, craft wacky made-up musical instruments from the imagination – one was a pair of salad bowls and platforms, another a Wacom tablet on a PVC video-tracking grid, and I’m working on an electronic djembe as my MechE final project. I draw, paint, spin wool into yarn, program things, create music on keyboard, electric violin, and a tiny bit of guitar, and also mix samples and live musicians into delicious mixes for the ear to savor. I want to write novels, all the time. I’m wordy and think best when writing or streaming consciousness through to conversation. I miss cross-country skiing and the pure, tasty snow (not slush, that hateful grey sludge). I’m studying the thing I’m just about the worst at – physics – and have overcome my fear of it and nearly wrangled its mysteries under my grasp, all in the quest for greater understanding of the world around me. I’m constantly asking questions, seeking answers to the entropic questions that float by from day to day. Now, I release you from listening to my ramblings, if you’ve gotten this far – and invite you to drop by and talk with me instead! =)
Monica Wong (co-op)
Major: Engineering Science / Geology
Year: 2011