FSU Painting and Drawing Area Head and Professor Carrie Ann Baade recently interviewed Skip Brea, an FSU Art MFA alum and interdisciplinary artist. Their conversation is documented below.
What have you been doing since graduation?
Lately, I’ve been working on a series of animations and tech-based pieces, treating software not just as a tool but as a generative material that shapes the logic and rhythm of the work. I’m experimenting with AI in a very hands-on way—using it as scaffolding, not as the final product. It’s part of a larger inquiry into how we navigate control, authorship, and transformation in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.
Since graduating from FSU, my practice hasn’t shifted so much as it has evolved. The core concepts I’m committed to—memory, identity, materiality—are still at the center, but they’ve taken new forms as I respond to time, loss, and new media. I’m constantly adjusting to what the work needs while staying grounded in a sense of purpose.
Those recurring themes of identity, memory, and transformation continue to unfold in my work today, but I’m thinking more expansively now—about the future of memory, about how stories are preserved or distorted in digital spaces, and about how we can continue to create work that resonates across class, culture, and genre.
Do you have any advice for students in our art program?
To current MFA students and recent grads, my advice would be: create community and don’t give up. This path is winding, and sometimes brutal, but it’s also generative and transformative. If you’re going to pivot, do it in the direction of the ideas that truly energize you. Stay close to the people and the work that light your fire.
What are your plans for the future?
Next up, once I wrap the Ross Museum show, I’ll be showing in the Bronx AIM Biennial at the top of the year in January. That one feels especially meaningful — a chance to return home in a sense, and to show in a community I care deeply about.
Skip Brea (b. 1992, Queens, NY) is a Dominican-American artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans painting, drawing, video, and installation. His work explores migration, memory, and cultural identity while examining technology, consumerism, and the management of images and data. Drawing upon diasporic histories, Afro-Caribbean spirituality, and the Western painting canon, Brea transforms narratives through contemporary software, image research, and data analytics, creating hybrid works that oscillate between tradition and innovation.
Brea earned his MFA in Painting from Florida State University in 2020 and is currently based in New York. He recently finished residencies at MacDowell, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and was just awarded the 44th AIM Fellowship through the Bronx Museum. He holds a double degree in Literature and Studio Art from DePauw University and an MFA from Florida State University. Currently, he is the Visual Arts Professor & Residency Director at the New York Arts Program.
