2025 MFA Merit Awards

Please join the MFA Program in congratulating the following first-year MFA students for winning our 2025 MFA Merit Award Scholarships & MFA 2020 Fund Award.

We also want to thank Jaysen Hohlen and Noah Lawrence-Holder, who together took on the task of co-jurying these awards, based on all MFA first-year students' Mid-Program Review work installed in the MFA Gallery in recent weeks. 

Jaysen Hohlen is a Minneapolis-based artist, writer and curator. He grew up in Central Minnesota where his father has worked as a builder for over forty years. His current work engages historic gay bars and cruising spaces in the Twin Cities and the corporations that now inhabit their sites. Hohlen graduated in 2019 from the University of Minnesota with a BFA in Studio Arts. He has received support from the McKnight Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. His work has been featured in various exhibitions and publications including at The Centre for the Periphery (Bavaria, DE), Waiting Room (Minneapolis, MN), the Walker Art Center’s Walker Reader (Minneapolis, MN). He co-founded and is the current Director of PAPA. 

Noah Lawrence-Holder is an illustrator and animator living and working in the Twin Cities. Their art explores intersectionality, identity, tenderness and sensuality. They have worked with clients such as the MET, the Minnesota Vikings, Photoshop and Summit Brewing, among many others. They have a cat named Glue who bites often.

 

Thanks to all the MFA students, faculty, mentors and community members who helped make MFA Mid-Program Reviews a success, and congratulations again to our awardees!

 

My best,

Sarah