Honors 2025

Savannah Arroyo

My work explores craft as a means of understanding my cultural roots, blending elements of my family’s history and upbringing through intricate patterns and repetitive forms. The act of repeating visual elements within my work creates unity and rhythm. Traditional handcraft methods, such as crochet, have allowed me to explore large-scale installations and experiment with space. Along with crochet, I draw inspiration from embroidery patterns and techniques, which enable me to challenge tradition by incorporating industrial materials like metal and rope.

Lara Love

I am an artist responding to the influence of my upbringing in the automotive industry, specifically drawing me to methods of metal fabrication. From a young age I worked in a family motorcycle business and started taking jobs as a welder when I got to college. I create sculptures and objects to activate in performance in order to subvert the friction of navigating stereotypical male dominated spaces as a queer femme laborer. I am guided by a sense of familiarity that comes from handling industrial materials from a young age as I embark on a personal chase to relieve myself from past confinements and create opportunities for regeneration.

Instagram: @ laralovestudio

Evelia Rosas

Evelia Rosas is an interdisciplinary artist with a focus on sculpture from Vista, California. She is currently pursuing her BA in Art and Sociology at UC Santa Barbara. In her work, she explores the beautiful yet painful intricacies of family ties, especially concerning definitions of home and how those ideas are conceptualized and often idealized in the United States.

I draw inspiration from sociology as an avenue to begin to understand myself, the social groups I belong to, and society at large. My art practice expands on this interest in social relationships, primarily focusing on familial dynamics and the domestic sphere. By looking inward at my family’s complex emotional and physical realities, I aim to reflect on larger trends in the human experience. I consider myself an interdisciplinary artist, but I have a particular soft spot for the transformation and full-body affair that arises with sculpture.

Instagram: @eh_vehl_ya 

Simone Rotman (she/her)

I study authentic connections between myself and others– and between myself and myself. Authenticity includes both the beautiful and the ugly, the prideful and the shameful, the bodily and the out-of-body experiences. I have spent countless hours sitting silently face to face with friends, family, peers, and strangers sinking into the intimacy of mutual gaze. While I work in a wide range of mediums– such as painting, drawing, performance, photography, spoken word, music and dance– it all emerges from my deep longing to see and be seen. I care about nurturing an artistic community and loving connections through my art. I believe that building environments where vulnerable expression is possible can help us understand each other and connect more vividly.

Instagram: @simonerotman